Larmor formula
Gives the total power radiated by an accelerating, nonrelativistic point charge / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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In electrodynamics, the Larmor formula is used to calculate the total power radiated by a nonrelativistic point charge as it accelerates. It was first derived by J. J. Larmor in 1897,[1] in the context of the wave theory of light.
When any charged particle (such as an electron, a proton, or an ion) accelerates, energy is radiated in the form of electromagnetic waves. For a particle whose velocity is small relative to the speed of light (i.e., nonrelativistic), the total power that the particle radiates (when considered as a point charge) can be calculated by the Larmor formula:
where or is the proper acceleration, is the charge, and is the speed of light. A relativistic generalization is given by the Liénard–Wiechert potentials.
In either unit system, the power radiated by a single electron can be expressed in terms of the classical electron radius and electron mass as:
One implication is that an electron orbiting around a nucleus, as in the Bohr model, should lose energy, fall to the nucleus and the atom should collapse. This puzzle was not solved until quantum theory was introduced.