From self-consistent covariant effective field theories to their galilean-invariant counterparts

Phys Rev Lett. 2007 Jun 29;98(26):262501. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.98.262501. Epub 2007 Jun 25.

Abstract

We discuss how to obtain the nonrelativistic limit of a self-consistent relativistic effective field theory for dynamic problems. It is shown that the standard v/c expansion yields Galilean invariance only to first order in v/c, whereas second order is required to obtain important contributions such as the spin-orbit force. We propose a modified procedure which is a mapping rather than a strict v/c expansion.