The stability of the QED vacuum in the temporal gauge
Dan Solomon
TL;DR
This paper investigates the stability of the QED vacuum in the temporal gauge, revealing that states with lower energy than the vacuum can exist, challenging the assumption of vacuum stability.
Contribution
It demonstrates that in QED with a fermion field in the temporal gauge, the vacuum is not the lowest energy state, which is a novel insight.
Findings
Existence of quantum states with less energy than the vacuum
Challenging the assumption of vacuum stability in QED
Implications for the understanding of gauge choices in quantum field theory
Abstract
The stability of the vacuum for QED in the temporal gauge will be examined. It is generally assumed that the vacuum state is the quantum state with the lowest energy. However, it will be shown that this is not the case for a system consisting of a fermion field coupled to a quantized electromagnetic field in the temporal gauge. It will be shown that for this situation there exist quantum states with less energy than the vacuum state.
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Taxonomy
TopicsQuantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions · Cosmology and Gravitation Theories · Black Holes and Theoretical Physics