One-loop electron mass and QED trace anomaly

TL;DR

This paper investigates the one-loop corrections to the electron mass and trace anomaly in QED, clarifying the relationship between different diagrammatic approaches and demonstrating their equivalence.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis connecting the diagrams for electron mass renormalization and the energy-momentum trace, showing their results are consistent.

Findings

The one-loop diagrams for electron mass and trace anomaly are different but yield the same results.

Analytical and diagrammatic explanations clarify the connection between the two sets of diagrams.

The paper confirms the consistency of different diagrammatic methods in QED calculations.

Abstract

Electron mass is considered as a matrix element of the energy-momentum trace in the rest frame. The one-loop diagrams for this matrix element are different from the textbook diagrams for the electron mass renormalization. We clarify connection between the two sets of diagrams and explain analytically and diagrammatically why the results of both calculations coincide.