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Re: Question About Charged Particles.



In a message dated 4/8/01 3:06:29 PM Eastern Daylight Time, jlu@HEP.ANL.GOV
writes:

<< 1. Now tell me first, what is meant by "possibility"? Are we
asking whether I can formulate a theory with zero rest-mass charged
particles?
Or is the question whether it would be nonsensical to look for such things
in nature?>>

No, the question was, is there any theoretical reason in QM that would rule
out massless charged particles? I wish I said it that way from the beginning.
Nevertheless I still think my point was clear.

2. The question seems to be based upon an erroneous assumption,
that there is an "electromagnetic mass...". As I tried to get Zanelli to
discover, that assumption doesn't work in perturbative QED.>>

The question as to electromagnetic mass was just one possible example
of what might be a theoretical objection to massless charged particles. I do
understand the point now that this concept doesn't work in Feynman's
renormalized formulation of QED.

3. The question seems to me to imply a paradox. The supposed
paradox disappears when one drops the erroneous assumption.

No paradox was being suggested. Opinions were expressed on another
list that massless charged particles were ruled out by the infinite range of
EM and I found this inconsistent with the assumption of massless particles
before the Higgs mechanism does it's work.


4. The last question "can this be reconciled" seems to be whether
the Higgs mechanism violates some fundamental principle. If the answer
were known to be "yes", then that fact would be widely known.>>

No what I wanted reconciled was the fact that the SM model to be consistent,
requires massless particles (pre Higgs) and it was believed that electrically
charged massless particles were ruled out by the long range EM interaction.
Also the fact that we do have zero rest particles which carry charges
associated with finite range interactions it seemed possible it was the range
of the interaction that provided the possible prohibition against zero rest
mass particles.

Bob Zannelli