| In extension to prior work done by Burko, Harte and Poisson the behaviour of a scalar point charge in various cosmological spacetimes is studied. Charges placed on a comoving world line exhibit a time-dependent rest mass. We find two classes of spacetimes, in which the particle shows qualitatively different behaviour. In both classes the particle will initially radiate a part or all of its rest mass away. In one class the particle will eventually regain all of its rest mass while in the other class only a fraction will be regained. In the special case of a matter dominated universe the equation of motion for a slowly moving lightly charged particle is studied and we investigate the background spacetime's effects on this motion. Finally we study this effect on a electrically charged particle. |
