Absorber Theory of Radiation in Expanding Universes

ABSORBER THEORY OF RADIATION IN EXPANDING UNIVERSES
JAYANT V. NARLIKAR
Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics
Ganeshkhind, Pune 411 007, India
Abstract
The Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory of radiation of the symmetric combination of retarded

and advanced potentials, originally developed in a static universe model, is applied to
asymptotic boundary conditions for an action-at-a-distance electro dynamic framework of
a Quasi-Steady State Universe; which as discussed is in opposition to the broad class of
Bigbang cosmologies.
1. Introduction
The subject of electricity and magnetism started with Coulomb laws which were similar to
the Newtonian inverse square law of gravitation. Both laws were action-at -a-distance laws
and they worked well till the mid-nineteenth century when the studies of rapidly moving
electric charges brought out the inadequacies of instantaneous action at a distance. In 1845,
Gauss (1867) in a letter to Weber hinted that the solution to the problem may come via the
concept of delayed action at a distance wherein the interaction travels with speed of light.
In restrospect one can say that the concept of action at a distance as developed by Newton
and Coulomb was not relativistically invariant and Gauss's idea was to make it so.
Gauss's suggestion remained unattended for several decades and in the meantime
in the 1860s a satisfactory picture of electrodynamics was given by the field theory of
Maxwell. A relativistically invariant action at a distance formulation became available only
in the early part of this century and it was given independently by K. Schwarschild (1903),
H. Tetrode (1922) and A.D. Fokker (1929).
While formally this met the required criteria and produced equations that resembled
those of Maxwell and Lorentz, the theory had a major practical defect: it treated the advanced
interactions on an equal footing with the retarded interactions. Thus electric charges
interacted via past directed signals as well as the future directed ones, the field of a typical
charge being described by a symmetric combination
81
R.L. Amoroso et al (eds.), Gravitation and Cosmology: From the Hubble Radius to the Planck Scale, 81-84.
© 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
82 J. V. NARLIKAR
instead of by the observed . The question was : how can such an acausal theory describe
reality which seems to respect the causality principle.
2. The Wheeler-Feynman Theory
In a couple of papers, J.A. Wheeler and R.P. Feynman (1945,1949) found an ingenious way
out of this difficulty by appealing to thermodynamic and cosmological considerations. They
demonstrated a general result that in a universe well filled with electric charges, where all
locally produced and outward propagating electrodynamics effects get eventually absorbed,
the net effect is to produce only the full retarded signals. Thus, we find in this type of
universe, which these authors called “a perfect absorber", the net effect on a typical charge
a of all other charges in the universe is
We may term this the “response" of the universe to the local acceleration of charge a. This
is the field which acting on the charge a produces the well known radiative damping, as first
appreciated by Dirac (1938). Further, when (2) is added to (1) we get the full retarded field
in the neighborhood of charge a. This theory was called by the authors the absorber theory
of radiation.
Thermodynamics entered the absorber theory through time asymmetry of absorption
process which in a subtle way introduced asymmetry of initial conditions.
3. The Asymmetry of Expanding Models
Later Hogarth (1962) demonstrated that in an expanding universe the time asymmetry is
automatically incorporated, a point missed in the Wheeler-Feynman discussion which was
centered on static universes.
Since the expanding world models are described in Riemannian spacetimes, it was
necessary to express the absorber theory and the basic framework of action at a distance in
such spacetimes. Further, as pointed out by Feynman, Hogarth's use of the collisional
ABSORBER THEORY IN EXPANDING UNIVERSES 83
damping formula to decide the absorption properties was inappropriate as it depended on

thermodynamic asymmetry that Hogarth was trying to avoid. It was thus necessary to do
calculations with an absorption process whose origin was purely electrodynamic. Hoyle and
Narlikar (1963) carried out these tasks and demonstrated that Hogarth's claims were broadly
correct.
These results go against the broad class of the popular big bang models in the sense
that in these models the response of the universe does not have the correct value given by (2)
above but it is the exact opposite! The result is that it is the advanced rather than the retarded
signals that manifest themselves in all electrodynamic processes. On the other hand, the
steady state model of Bondi, Gold and Hoyle and the recently proposed quasi-steady state
model of Hoyle, Burbidge and Narlikar (1993) give the correct response.
4. The Quantized Version
Later work by Hoyle and Narlikar (1969,1971) showed how these concepts can be extended
from the classical to quantum electrodynamics. The notion of action at a distance can indeed
be described within the path-integral framework mechanics. The following results then
follow:
(I) The phenomenon of spontaneous transition of an atomic electron can be described as

the interaction of the electron with the response of the universe. Provided the universe gives
the correct classical response, it will then give the correct result for this phenomenon also.
(ii) Instead of being independent entities called “fields” with uncountably infinite degrees
of freedom, here we have only the degrees of freedom of the charges and the collective
response of the universe. Thus the formal divergences associated with field quantization are
avoided.
(iii) When path integral formulation is extended to the relativistic domain, the above
method can be generalized to include the full quantum electrodynamics of interacting
electrons including such phenomena as scattering, level shifts, anomalous magnetic moment,
etc.
Recently Hoyle and Narlikar (1993,1995) have found that the infinities that require
renormalization of integrals in quantum field theory do not appear in the quantum absorber
theory provided we are in the right kind of expanding universe. Thus the event horizon in
the future of the steady state or quasi-steady state theory produces a cut-off at high
frequencies of the relevant integrals which therefore are finite. It is thus possible to talk of
a finite bare mass and bare charge of an electron.
84 J. V. NARLIKAR
5. Concluding Remarks
These investigations of the absorber theory in the expanding universe therefore tells us
that
provided the universe has the right kind of asymptotic boundary conditions, the
action-at-a-distance framework of electrodynamics has the following advantages over the
field theory:
(I) It links the time asymmetry in cosmology to time asymmetry in electrodynamics and
thus helps us to better understand the local principle of causality as a consequence of the
large scale structure of the universe.
(ii) It explains quantum electrodynamics with fewer degrees of freedom.
(iii) It is free from divergences that beset quantum field theory.
There is an additional possibility not yet fully investigated, namely, the response of the
future absorber to any microscopic experiment in the laboratory. Could it be that we are
unable to predict the outcome of an experiment with classical certainty, because not all
variables are local? As in spontaneous transition, there is the response of the universe
which may enter into the dynamics in an unpredictable way. Thus concepts like the
collapse of the wavefunction, Bell's inequality, the EPR paradox, etc. may receive
alternative interpretation in this action-at-a-distance framework.
References
Dirac P.A.M., Proc. Roy. Soc., A167, 148 (1938).
Fokker A.D., Z. Phys., 58, 386 (1929).
Gauss C.F., Werke, 5, 629 (1867).
Hogarth J.E., Proc. Roy. Soc., A314, 529 (1962).
Hoyle F., Narlikar J.V., Proc. Roy. Soc., A277, 1 (1963).
Hoyle F., Narlikar J.V., Ann. Phys. (N.Y.) 54, 207 (1969).
Hoyle F., Narlikar J.V., Ann. Phys. (N.Y.) 62, 44 (1971).
Hoyle F., Narlikar J.V., Proc. Roy. Soc., A442, 469 (1993).
Hoyle F., Narlikar J.V., Rev. Mod. Phys., 67, 113 (1995)
Hoyle F., Burbidge G., Narlikar J.V., ApJ, 410, 437 (1993).
Schwarzschild K., Gottinger Nachrichten, 128, 132 (1903).
Tetrode H., Z. Phys., 10, 317 (1922).
Wheeler J.A., Feynman R. P., Rev. Mod. Phys., 17, 157 (1945).
Wheeler J.A., Feynman R.P., Rev. Mod. Phys., 21, 425 (1949).

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ABSORBER THEORY OF RADIATION IN EXPANDING UNIVERSES

The Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory of radiation of the symmetric combination of retarded

2. The Wheeler-Feynman Theory

3. The Asymmetry of Expanding Models

damping formula to decide the absorption properties was inappropriate as it depended on

4. The Quantized Version

(I) The phenomenon of spontaneous transition of an atomic electron can be described as

(ii) It explains quantum electrodynamics with fewer degrees of freedom.

(iii) It is free from divergences that beset quantum field theory.

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