15th Capra Meeting on Radiation Reaction in General Relativity

Effective field theory and radiation reaction

Chad Galley

Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech

I give an overview of the effective field theory (EFT) paradigm for systems exhibiting radiation reaction, focusing more on how to build an effective theory than on detailed calculations with it. As the effective theory utilizes a Lagrangian formulation it would seem that the method is useless for systems exhibiting radiation reaction, a dissipative process. I discuss a recent formulation Hamilton's variational principle that extends the usual Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formalisms to generally non-conservative systems. I conclude by showing how this new formulation is used in EFT to reproduce well-known radiative effects.