# A Unified Approach to the Self-Force Problem

- Institution: CERN
- Speaker: Ira Rothstein
- Year: 2026
- Language: English
- Source: [CERN](https://videos.cern.ch/record/3023632)
- Licence: [CERN](https://copyright.web.cern)
- Who can watch: Teens profiles and older (sources give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the source's own words)

The self force problem is ubiquitous in astrophysics and cosmology. It is defined by the following situation. An object moves in contact with an external system (S), which may or may not break Poincare invariance. The motion of the object deforms S which then back-reacts on the particle and changes its dynamics. When S is Poincare invariant this is often called "Radiation Reaction Forces" while when it S violates this symmetry it often called (incompletely) "Dynamical Friction". In this talk I will introduce an effective field theory which can describe both cases in the context. This theory turns out to have an interesting renormalization group flow in the context of the Schwinger Keldysh formalism and allows one to calculate in a systematic way for any choice of S.

00:00:00 Slide 1

00:03:02 Slide 2

00:03:14 Slide 3

00:03:45 Slide 4

00:05:21 Slide 5

00:08:22 Slide 6

00:11:00 Slide 7

00:12:56 Slide 8

00:16:06 Slide 9

00:18:21 Slide 10

00:20:34 Slide 11

00:27:56 Slide 12

00:28:24 Slide 13

00:29:27 Slide 14

00:29:43 Slide 15

00:31:42 Slide 16

00:32:52 Slide 17

00:35:56 Slide 18

00:38:13 Slide 19

00:40:19 Slide 20

00:40:37 Slide 21

00:42:21 Slide 22

00:43:26 Slide 23

00:44:53 Slide 24

00:47:47 Slide 25

00:53:29 Slide 26

00:55:18 Slide 27

00:56:21 Slide 28

00:56:50 Slide 29

00:57:08 Slide 30

00:58:30 Slide 31

00:59:33 Slide 32

00:59:47 Slide 33

01:00:45 Slide 34

01:01:25 Slide 35

## Lectures

1. [A Unified Approach to the Self-Force Problem](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/learn/cern/3023632/717f374dd888), 1 h 9 min (CERN's player)