ar X iv : m at h - ph / 9 90 70 09 v 1 1 2 Ju l 1 99 9 Delta Interactions and Electrodynamics of Point Particles

We report on some recent work of the authors showing the relations between singular (point) perturbation of the Laplacian and the dynamical system describing a charged point particle interacting with the self–generated radiation field (the Maxwell–Lorentz system) in the dipole approximation. We show that in the limit of a point particle, the dynamics of the system is described by an abstract wave equation containing a selfadjoint operator Hm of the class of point interactions; the classical Abraham–Lorentz–Dirac third order equation, or better its integrated second order version, emerges as the evolution equation of the singular part of the field and is related to the boundary conditions entering in the definition of the operator domain of Hm. We also give the Hamiltonian structure of the limit model and, in the case of no external force, we study the reduced dynamics on the linear stable manifold.