The exact Darwin Lagrangian

Darwin (1920) noted that when radiation can be neglected it should be possible to eliminate the radiation degrees-of-freedom from the action of classical electrodynamics and keep the discrete particle degrees-of-freedom only. Darwin derived his well known Lagrangian by series expansion in $v/c$ keeping terms up to order $(v/c)^2$. Since radiation is due to acceleration the assumption of low speed should not be necessary. A Lagrangian is suggested that neglects radiation without assuming low speed. It cures deficiencies of the Darwin Lagrangian in the ultra-relativistic regime.Comment: 2.5 pages, no figure

The Semi-Classical Relativistic Darwin Potential for Spinning Particles in the Rest-Frame Instant Form: 2-Body Bound States with Spin 1/2 Constituents

In the semiclassical approximation of Grassmann-valued electric charges for regularizing Coulomb self-energies, we extract the unique acceleration-independent interaction hidden in any Lienard-Wiechert solution for the system of N positive-energy spinning particles plus the electromagnetic field in the radiation gauge of the rest-frame instant form. With the help of a semiclassical Foldy-Wouthuysen transformation, this allows us to find the relativistic semiclassical Darwin potential. In the 2-body case the quantization of the lowest order reproduces exactly the results from the reduction of the Bethe-Salpeter equation.Comment: 102 pages, revtex fil

A derivation of the Breit equation from Barut's covariant formulation of electrodynamics in terms of direct interactions

We study Barut's covariant equations describing the electromagnetic interactions between N spin-1/2 particles. In the covariant formulation each particle is described by a Dirac spinor. It is assumed that the interactions between the particles are not mediated by a bosonic field (direct interactions). Within this formulation, using the Lagrangian formalism, we derive the approximate (semirelativistic) Breit equation for two interacting spin-1/2 particles

Reduction of the two-body dynamics to a one-body description in classical electrodynamics

We discuss the mapping of the conservative part of two-body electrodynamics onto that of a test charged particle moving in some external electromagnetic field, taking into account recoil effects and relativistic corrections up to second post-Coulombian order. Unlike the results recently obtained in general relativity, we find that in classical electrodynamics it is not possible to implement the matching without introducing external parameters in the effective electromagnetic field. Relaxing the assumption that the effective test particle moves in a flat spacetime provides a feasible way out.Comment: 20 pages, revtex; minor change