Negative Energy: From Lamb Shift to Entanglement

TL;DR

This paper explores the role of negative energy in quantum theory, demonstrating its compatibility with existing physics, clarifying quantum phenomena, and offering a new perspective on the Lamb shift and quantum field infinities.

Contribution

It introduces a hypothesis on negative energy that unifies various quantum phenomena and provides an alternative approach to calculating the Lamb shift without traditional renormalization.

Findings

Negative energy hypothesis aligns with experimental results

Recalculation of Lamb shift matches conventional results

Provides insights into quantum measurement and entanglement

Abstract

"Negative energy" has been one of the most enduring puzzles in quantum theory, whereas the present work reveals that it actually plays a central role in clarifying various controversies of quantum theory. The basic idea is contained in a hypothesis on negative energy, and it is shown that the idea: (1)is compatible with both relativistic quantum mechanics and known experimental results; (2)helps to clarify the essence of matter waves, and therefore better understand the reality of the wave function, the so-called 'wave-packet reduction' occurring in quantum measurement, and the ghost like correlations between entangled systems; (3)is helpful for distinguishing the vacuum from the ground state of the quantized field, and may supply a possible way for removing the deep-rooted infinities in quantum field theory. The vacuum energy density of the electromagnetic field is calculated here as an example. By employing the same idea, the Lamb-Shift is recalculated in a different way from conventional renormalization method, yet the same result as Bethe's can be definitely obtained.