On electrodynamics of rapidly moving sources

TL;DR

This paper explores how rapidly moving sources in electrodynamics induce vacuum pair creation, limiting their maximum speed and causing significant energy and charge loss due to vacuum back-reaction, thus ensuring conservation laws.

Contribution

It introduces a mechanism where vacuum back-reaction constrains the speed of charged bodies and quantifies energy and charge loss due to vacuum instability.

Findings

Charged bodies cannot approach the speed of light closer than a limit depending on the coupling constant.

Vacuum pair creation can cause sources to lose up to 50% of their energy and charge.

Vacuum back-reaction enforces conservation laws in high-velocity regimes.

Abstract

Rapidly moving sources create pairs in the vacuum and lose energy. In consequence of this, the velocity of a charged body cannot approach the speed of light closer than a certain limit which depends only on the coupling constant. The vacuum back-reaction secures the observance of the conservation laws. A source can lose up to 50% of energy and charge because of the vacuum instability.