| MadSci Network: Physics |
James,
To begin with, particles at high velocity don't really get higher masses. The quantity that you may have heard of as "relativistic mass" is actually defined as:
m
Mrel = -------------
(1 - (v/c)^2)
where m is the invariant "rest mass" of an object, v is the velocity, and c
is the speed of light. As I wrote in
this earlier post, this really is just the particle's energy
divided by a factor of c^2. Relativistic mass is not used very much anymore
by physicists except for in some treatments of General Relativity, which
deals with accelerated and gravitational systems.
Anyway, if I understand correctly, your idea is that as charged particles reach higher velocities, some decrease in their charge could occur, meaning that they would not be accelerated as much as we think they should be if their charge was constant. This would imply that the energy of the particle would be lower than the constant charge hypothesis would indicate. Would you agree?
This hypothesis can (and has) been tested by accelerating beams of particles and firing them at calorimeters, which measure particle energies. Calorimeters that I have worked with have the same energy response to electrons and high energy photons (gammas), so we can conclude that calorimeter readings do not appear to vary with the particle's charge. We find that particle energies measured by calorimeters increase in direct proportion to the beam energy calculated using the constant charge hypothesis.
Therefore, I would conclude that a velocity-dependent particle charge is ruled out by experiment.
I hope this helps.
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