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

DOI10.1307/MMJ/1030132417MaRDI QIDQ1590959zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Felix Finster

Publication date 1 January 2001

Published in Michigan Mathematical Journal (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/9707128

zbMATH Keywords

Dirac sea in position space

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

PDEs in connection with quantum mechanics (35Q40) Perturbation theories for operators and differential equations in quantum theory (81Q15) Perturbative methods of renormalization applied to problems in quantum field theory (81T15) Gravitational interaction in quantum theory (81V17)

Abstract: The perturbation of the Dirac sea to first order in the external potential is calculated in an expansion around the light cone. It is shown that the perturbation consists of a causal contribution, which describes the singular behavior of the Dirac sea on the light cone and contains bounded line integrals over the potential and its partial derivatives, and a non-causal contribution, which is a smooth function. As a preparatory step, we construct a formal solution of the inhomogeneous Klein-Gordon equation in terms of an infinite series of line integrals. More generally, the method presented can be used for an explicit analysis of Feynman diagrams of the Dirac, Klein-Gordon, and wave equations in position space.

Review text

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.

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