In a message dated 4/7/01 9:08:08 PM Eastern Daylight Time, jlu@HEP.ANL.GOV
writes:
A clarification.
Jack Utetsky writes
I have already suggested. If I calculate the corrections to the mass (as
in QED), I find that the corrections are proportional to the bare mass.
If I believe that these corrections are governed by a cut-off, as the
modern philosophy goes, then massless particles remain massless after
taking into account the effect of their EM field.>>
This conclusion was not reached on the other list. It was believed that a
massless particle with an electric charge was not possible.
Jack writes:
So I can clearly have theories in which charged particles are
massless. It is my guess that consistent theories would require such
particles to be confined (like gluons, which have color charge), but we
seem to be a long way from proving such a guess.>>
However I don't believe massless charged particle were ruled out if they was
confined. Personally I suspect your answer is the most correct given these
two opinions. I believe John Denker also held out the possibility of a
massless charged particle being possible.