A quantum mechanism underlying the gauge symmetry in quantum electrodynamics

TL;DR

This paper presents a quantum-grounded formulation of QED that explicitly derives the gauge transformation mechanism for the photon field, challenging traditional assumptions about photon spin properties.

Contribution

It introduces a novel quantum formulation of QED that accounts for zero-momentum bare photons and explicitly derives the gauge transformation mechanism.

Findings

Explicit expression for photon field component involving zero-momentum bare photons

Demonstration that gauge transformations correspond to specific changes in the photon field

Provides a quantum mechanism for gauge symmetry in QED

Abstract

In this paper, a formulation, which is completely established on a quantum ground, is presented for basic contents of quantum electrodynamics (QED). This is done by moving away, from the fundamental level, the assumption that the spin space of bare photons should (effectively) possess the same properties as those of free photons observed experimentally. Within this formulation, bare photons with zero momentum can not be neglected when constructing the photon field; and an explicit expression for the related part of the photon field is derived. When a local gauge transformation is performed on the electron field, this expression predicts a change that turns out to be equal to what the gauge symmetry requires for the gauge field. This gives an explicit mechanism, by which the photon field may change under gauge transformations in QED.