Self Energy

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. In theoretical physics and quantum field theory a particle's self-energy ¿ represents the contribution to the particle's energy, or effective mass, due to interactions between the particle and the system it is part of. For example, in electrostatics the self-energy of a given charge distribution is the energy required to assemble the distribution by bringing in the constituent charges from infinity, where the electric force goes to zero. Mathematically, this energy is equal to the so-called on-the-mass-shell value of the proper self-energy operator (or proper mass operator) in the momentum-energy representation (more precisely, to hbar times this value). In this, or other representations (such as the space-time representation), the self-energy is pictorially (and economically) represented by means of Feynman diagrams, such as the one shown below.

Pagina's: 184, Paperback, Betascript Publishers