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Re: Question About Charged Particles.



On Sat, 7 Apr 2001, Robert B Zannelli wrote:

In a message dated 4/6/01 11:10:22 PM Eastern Daylight Time, jlu@HEP.ANL.GOV
writes:

<< In other words, the question proposed is, as far as I can see,
meaningless like "where does the light go when it goes out?"
More precisely, in what formalism is it true that "there is an
electromagnetic mass associated with a charged particle?". And in what
formalism is it true that "Gluons are believed to have zero rest mass even
though they carry a color charge"?
Having said all this, there is a simple answer to the
non-question; "gluons carry color charge and have zero rest mass, they
are therefore unobservable in isolation."
Regards,
Jack >>

I don't see why the question "can a charged particle have a zero rest mass"
is meaningless.

That's because you didn't consider the questions beginning with
"in what formalism...".

Again here is the summary.
1) Gluons carry color charge and have zero rest mass.
2) Neutrinos were thought to be massless and carry a weak charge
(At least left handed one do)
3) There are no particles which carry an electrical charge that
are massless as far as we know. Is it possible for a charged massless
particle to exist?

But this is a different question because it leaves out the part about
"There is an electromagnetic mass associated..."

Now the crux of this "non question" is that both the weak and
color charge have limited range. The first due to a massive intermediary
boson the latter to the confinement of all colored particles. So the question
becomes is it true that QM and SR (Didn't Dirac unite these two?) allow
massless charges particles if the associated force of their charge is limited
in range.

But you are now specifying the formalism in which you want an
answer. So write down the Dirac equation withe massless electrons coupled
to electromagnetism, calculate the lowest order corrections to the mass
(see, e.g., Appendix B of Schwinger, Phys Rev 82 (1951) 664-679) and let
us know the answer which you can read out of Eq. B.15.

--
Franz Kafka's novels and novella's are so Kafkaesque that one has to
wonder at the enormity of coincidence required to have produced a writer
named Kafka to write them.
Greg Nagan from "The Metamorphosis" in
<The 5-MINUTE ILIAD and Other Classics>

Regards,
Jack