Self-Force with a Stochastic Component from Radiation Reaction of a Scalar Charge Moving in Curved Spacetime

TL;DR

This paper derives a quantum field theoretical scalar self-force and a stochastic ALD-Langevin equation for a charged particle in curved spacetime, highlighting quantum fluctuations' effects on particle motion and potential implications for gravitational wave modeling.

Contribution

It provides a novel derivation of the scalar ALD equation and introduces a stochastic component accounting for quantum fluctuations in curved spacetime.

Findings

Regularized the scalar self-force using effective field theory methods.

Derived a stochastic ALD-Langevin equation including quantum fluctuations.

Identified potential secular effects impacting gravitational waveform calculations.

Abstract

We give a quantum field theoretical derivation of the scalar Abraham-Lorentz-Dirac (ALD) equation and the self-force for a scalar charged particle interacting with a quantum scalar field in curved spacetime. We regularize the causal Green's function using a quasi-local expansion in the spirit of effective field theory and obtain a regular expression for the self-force. The scalar ALD equation obtained in this way for the classical motion of the particle checks with the equation obtained by Quinn earlier \cite{Quinn}. We further derive a scalar ALD-Langevin equation with a classical stochastic force accounting for the effect of quantum fluctuations in the field, which causes small fluctuations on the particle trajectory. This equation will be useful for the study of stochastic motion of charges under the influence of both quantum and classical noise sources, derived either self-consistently (as done here) or put in by hand (with warnings). We show the possibility of secular effects from such stochastic influences on the trajectory that may impact on the present calculations of gravitational waveform templates.