Radiation-reaction force on a particle plunging into a black hole - art. no. 084040

We calculate the self-force acting on a scalar particle which is falling ra dially into a Schwarzschild black hole. We treat the particle's self-held a s a linear perturbation over the fixed Schwarzschild background. The force is calculated by numerically solving the appropriate wave equation for each mode of the field in the time domain, calculating its contribution to the self-force, and summing over all modes using Ori's mode-sum regularization prescription. The radial component of the force is attractive at large dist ances, and becomes repulsive as the particle approaches the event horizon.