A Unified Approach to the Self-Force Problem

by Ira Rothstein (CMU)

Wednesday 18 Mar 2026, 14:00 → 15:00 Europe/Zurich

4/3-006 - TH Conference Room (CERN)

The self force problem is ubiquitous in astrophysics and cosmology. It is defined by the following situation. An object moves in contact with an external system (S), which may or may not break Poincare invariance.  The motion of the object deforms S which then back-reacts on the particle and changes its dynamics. When S is Poincare invariant this is often called "Radiation Reaction Forces” while when it S violates this symmetry it often called  (incompletely) "Dynamical Friction”.  In this talk I will introduce an effective field theory which can describe both cases in the context. This theory turns out to have an interesting renormalization group flow in the context of the Schwinger Keldysh formalism and allows one to calculate in a systematic way for any choice of S.