Light-cone expansion of the Dirac sea to first order in the external potential (Q1590959)

In relativistic quantum mechanics, the problem of the unphysical negative-energy solutions of the Dirac equation is solved by the conception that all negative-energy states are occupied in the vacuum forming the so-called Dirac sea. In [the author, Adv. Theor. Math. Phys. 2, 963-985 (1998; Zbl 0929.35123)] the Dirac sea was constructed for the Dirac equation with general interaction in terms of a formal power series in the external potential. In the present paper, we turn our attention to a single Feynman diagram of this perturbation expansion. More precisely, we analyze the contribution to first order in the potential and derive explicit formulas for the Dirac sea in position space. Since this analysis does not require a detailed knowledge of the perturbation expansion for the Dirac sea, we can make this paper self-consistent by giving a brief introduction to the mathematical problem.