Volume 18: Pages 265-285, 2005

Electromagnetic Self‐Field Theory and Its Application to the Hydrogen Atom

Anthony H. J. Fleming

Biophotonics Research Institute, P.O. Box 81, Highett 3190 Australia

Despite nearly a century of considered opinion to the contrary, an electromagnetic self‐field theory has been developed for atomic systems consisting of charged particles. An azimuthal modal spinor is used as a trial solution for the motions of each particle and tested using Maxwell's equations for particle‐field interactions. Both the particles and the field are seen in terms of coupled spinors associated with electric and magnetic fields. Unconventionally, the particle electric and magnetic fields are measured between centers of motion and not between charge points. Maxwell's curl equations are seen as a balance of the electric and magnetic kinetic energies with a particle's total energy and a balance of its electric and magnetic potential energies. The theory results in a system of inhomogeneous equations, the unknowns being the coupled spinors of each particle: four equations for the electron and also for the proton in the hydrogen atom and two conjugate pairs of equations for each particle. The modal equations for the electron yield analytic solutions for the resonant frequencies, the radii, the Rydberg constant, and the Balmer series. The modal equations for the proton give an estimate for the size of the proton.

Keywords: electromagnetic self‐field theory, Maxwell's equations, Bohr quantum theory, quantum electrodynamics, quantum chromodynamics, quantum field theory, dynamic motion of electron and proton in hydrogen atom, Rydberg constant, Balmer formula, atomic physics, Planck's constant, nuclear physics, spectroscopy, strong and weak forces

Received: April 22, 2002; Published online: December 15, 2008