Relativistic properties for hybrid systems of particles containing photons and massive particles

University of California at Berkeley - 387 Soda Hall, 94720-177 Berkeley, CA, USA

Received: 29 July 2008
Accepted: 13 August 2008

Abstract

The use of relativistic frame invariants is very well established, especially when it comes to the energy-momentum. Most traditional treatments use this particular invariant in order to calculate the “equivalent mass” of a system or, the “mass added to a system”. In the following paper we will take a significant departure by avoiding the notion of mass altogether and by using frame-variant quantities like total energy E and momentum p in order to characterize relativistic systems of particles. The systems under evaluations are a most general hybrid made up of both massive particles and photons. We will show the effects of adding photons to a system of massive particles. The new approach is extremely important in applications like particle accelerators where we can only work with directly measurable quantities, the energy E and the momentum p. In paragraph 4 we will demonstrate also how the new approach allows us to calculate the effect of injecting electromagnetic energy in the form of photons in a particle condensate, a very important application for plasma physics.