Abstract: One of the most basic examples of a self-force phenomenon (sometimes called a radiation reaction force) is that of a small, charged particle near a large spherical mass, such as a Schwarzschild black hole. If an electric charge is held stationary above the black hole, there are novel electrostatic forces on the particle. If the charged particle is orbiting the mass, the fields created by the particle back-react on the particle and cause it to depart from its otherwise free-fall, geodesic motion. There are many ways to solve for the forces and motion in these circumstances, but past solutions have involved considerable technical machinery, and the results are messy and "non-intuitive". I will take a fundamentally new approach to this problem using the method of image charges. This approach makes the forces easier to visualize and restores an intuitive understanding of the origin of the forces. In the talk, I will make a clear connection between this new work and the method of images we use in elementary electrostatics.

Speaker bio: Alan Wiseman received his BSc in Physics in 1981 and his M.A in Math in 1984, both from the University of Kansas. He then went to Washington University, where he obtained his MA in Physics in 1989 and his PhD in 1992. From 1992 to 1994 he was a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University and from 1994 to 1997 he worked as a faculty research fellow at Caltech. Wiseman has been at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee since 1998, where he currently holds the rank of associate professor. He served as the Chair of the Department of Physics from 2008 to 2012. Professor Wiseman has been a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) since 1999.