Gauging of equations method. I. Electromagnetic currents of three distinguishable particles

We present a general method for incorporating an external electromagnetic field into descriptions of feu body systems whose strong interactions are described by integral equations. In particular, we address the case where the integral equations are those of quantum field theory and effectively sum up an infinite number of Feynman diagrams. The method involves the idea of gauging the integral equations themselves, and results in electromagnetic amplitudes where an external photon is effectively coupled to every part of every strong interaction diagram in the model. Current conservation is therefore implemented in the way prescribed by quantum field theory. We apply our gauging procedure to the four-dimensional integral equations describing a system of three distinguishable relativistic particles. In this way we obtain the expressions needed to calculate all possible electromagnetic processes of the three-body system. An interesting aspect of our results is the natural appearance of a subtraction term needed to avoid the overcounting of diagrams. [S0556-2813(99)04609-9].