Aberration and the Electric Force on a Moving Charged Particle
David M. Drury
Keywords: electric force, moving charged particle, aberration angle. particle velocity
The possibility that the electric force on a charge particle moving through a static electric field acts at the optical aberration angle instead of parallel to the electric field is investigated. Simple reasoning leads to the conclusion that if the force does act at the aberration angle, then the Lorentz force equation must be modified to include a force component acting in the opposite direction of the particle velocity. Such a force component is proposed in this paper. The effect of this additional component is calculated and is found to be large enough to be observed in the laboratory with a low-energy experiment.
