Title: Reply to comment on `Poynting flux in the neighbourhood of a point charge in arbitrary motion and the radiative power losses',
Abstract: Doubts have been expressed in a comment (Eur. J. Phys., 39, 018001, 2018),
about the tenability of the formulation for radiative losses in our recent
published work (Eur. J. Phys., 37, 045210, 2016). We provide our reply to the
comment. In particular, it is pointed out that one need to clearly distinguish
between the rate of the energy-momentum being carried by the electromagnetic
radiation to far-off space, and that of the mechanical energy-momentum losses
being incurred by the radiating charge. It is also demonstrated that while the
Poynting flux is always positive through a spherical surface centred on the
retarded position of the charge, it could surprisingly be negative through a
surface centred on the "present" position of the charge. It is further shown
that the mysterious Schott term, hitherto thought in literature to arise from
some acceleration-dependent energy in fields, is actually nothing but the
difference in rate of change of energy in self-fields of the charge between the
retarded and present times.