English

Head-on collision of ultrarelativistic charges

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2009-11-10 v1

Abstract

We consider the head-on collision of two opposite-charged point particles moving at the speed of light. Starting from the field of a single charge we derive in a first step the field generated by uniformly accelerated charge in the limit of infinite acceleration. From this we then calculate explicitly the burst of radiation emitted from the head-on collision of two charges and discuss its distributional structure. The motivation for our investigation comes from the corresponding gravitational situation where the head-on collision of two ultrarelativistic particles (black holes) has recently aroused renewed interest.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.gr-qc/0307017,
  title  = {Head-on collision of ultrarelativistic charges},
  author = {P. C. Aichelburg and H. Balasin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:gr-qc/0307017},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

4 figures, uses the AMSmath