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A tale of three equations: Breit, Eddington—Gaunt, and Two-Body Dirac

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Abstract

G. Breit's original paper of 1929 postulates the Breit equation as a correction to an earlier defective equation due to Eddington and Gaunt, containing a form of interaction suggested by Heisenberg and Pauli. We observe that manifestly covariant electromagnetic Two-Body Dirac equations previously obtained by us in the framework of Relativistic Constraint Mechanics reproduce the spectral results of the Breit equation but through an interaction structure that contains that of Eddington and Gaunt. By repeating for our equation the analysis that Breit used to demonstrate the superiority of his equation to that of Eddington and Gaunt, we show that the historically unfamiliar interaction structures of Two-Body Dirac equations (in Breit-like form) are just what is needed to correct the covariant Eddington Gaunt equation without resorting to Breit's version of retardation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. 12474 Sunny Glen Drive, 93021, Moorpark, California

    Peter Van Alstine

  2. The University of Tennessee Space Institute, 37388, Tullahoma, Tennessee

    Horace W. Crater

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  1. Peter Van Alstine
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  2. Horace W. Crater
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Van Alstine, P., Crater, H.W. A tale of three equations: Breit, Eddington—Gaunt, and Two-Body Dirac. Found Phys 27, 67–79 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02550156

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