scholarly journals QED Response of the Vacuum

Physics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerd Leuchs ◽  
Margaret Hawton ◽  
Luis L. Sánchez-Soto

We present a new perspective on the link between quantum electrodynamics (QED) and Maxwell’s equations. We demonstrate that the interpretation of the electric displacement vector D = ε 0 E , where E is the electric field vector and ε 0 is the permittivity of the vacuum, as vacuum polarization is consistent with QED. A free electromagnetic field polarizes the vacuum, but the polarization and magnetization currents cancel giving zero source current. The speed of light is a universal constant, while the fine structure constant, which couples the electromagnetic field to matter runs, as it should.

Author(s):  
Gerd Leuchs ◽  
Margaret Hawton ◽  
Luis Sanchez-Soto

We present a new perspective of the link between QED and Maxwell's equations. We demonstrate that the interpretation of $\mathbf{D}=\varepsilon_{0} \mathbf{E}$ as vacuum polarization is consistent with QED. A free electromagnetic field polarizes the vacuum, but the polarization and magnetization currents cancel giving zero source current. The speed of light is a universal constant, while the fine structure constant, which couples the electromagnetic field to matter, runs as it should.


Author(s):  
Kouichi Semba

Abstract The strength of the coupling between an atom and a single electromagnetic field mode is defined as the ratio of the vacuum Rabi frequency to the Larmor frequency, and is determined by a small dimensionless physical constant, the fine structure constant $$\alpha =Z_{vac} / 2R_{K}$$. On the other hand, the quantum circuit including Josephson junctions behaving as artificial atoms and it can be coupled to the electromagnetic field with arbitrary strength (Devoret et al. 2007). Therefore, the circuit quantum electrodynamics (circuit QED) is extremely suitable for studying much stronger light-matter interaction.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (12) ◽  
pp. 1818-1827
Author(s):  
Yu R Sun ◽  
Shui-Ming Hu

Abstract Helium is a prototype three-body system and has long been a model system for developing quantum mechanics theory and computational methods. The fine-structure splitting in the 23P state of helium is considered to be the most suitable for determining the fine-structure constant α in atoms. After more than 50 years of efforts by many theorists and experimentalists, we are now working toward a determination of α with an accuracy of a few parts per billion, which can be compared to the results obtained by entirely different methods to verify the self-consistency of quantum electrodynamics. Moreover, the precision spectroscopy of helium allows determination of the nuclear charge radius, and it is expected to help resolve the ‘proton radius puzzle’. In this review, we introduce the latest developments in the precision spectroscopy of the helium atom, especially the discrepancies among theoretical and experimental results, and give an outlook on future progress.


Atoms ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tatsumi Aoyama ◽  
Toichiro Kinoshita ◽  
Makiko Nio

The anomalous magnetic moment of the electron a e measured in a Penning trap occupies a unique position among high precision measurements of physical constants in the sense that it can be compared directly with the theoretical calculation based on the renormalized quantum electrodynamics (QED) to high orders of perturbation expansion in the fine structure constant α , with an effective parameter α / π . Both numerical and analytic evaluations of a e up to ( α / π ) 4 are firmly established. The coefficient of ( α / π ) 5 has been obtained recently by an extensive numerical integration. The contributions of hadronic and weak interactions have also been estimated. The sum of all these terms leads to a e ( theory ) = 1 159 652 181.606 ( 11 ) ( 12 ) ( 229 ) × 10 − 12 , where the first two uncertainties are from the tenth-order QED term and the hadronic term, respectively. The third and largest uncertainty comes from the current best value of the fine-structure constant derived from the cesium recoil measurement: α − 1 ( Cs ) = 137.035 999 046 ( 27 ) . The discrepancy between a e ( theory ) and a e ( ( experiment ) ) is 2.4 σ . Assuming that the standard model is valid so that a e (theory) = a e (experiment) holds, we obtain α − 1 ( a e ) = 137.035 999 1496 ( 13 ) ( 14 ) ( 330 ) , which is nearly as accurate as α − 1 ( Cs ) . The uncertainties are from the tenth-order QED term, hadronic term, and the best measurement of a e , in this order.


Geophysics ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 65 (5) ◽  
pp. 1560-1568 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tsili Wang ◽  
Michael L. Oristaglio

The finite‐difference time‐domain method is adapted to simulate radar surveys of objects buried in dispersive soils whose complex permittivity depends on frequency. The method treats dispersion through the constitutive relation between the electric field vector and the electric displacement vector, which is a convolution in the time domain. This convolution is updated recursively, along with Maxwell’s equations, after approximating the dispersion with a Debye (exponential) relaxation model. A novel feature of our work is the inclusion of dispersion in the perfectly‐matched layer formulation of Maxwell’s equations, which gives an absorbing boundary condition for dispersive media. We simulate 200-MHz ground‐penetrating radar surveys over metallic and plastic pipes buried at a depth of 2 m in soils whose electrical properties model are those of clay loams of different moisture contents. Radar reflections modeled for pipes in dispersive soil differ from those for pipes in soils whose electrical properties are constant (at the values of dispersive soil at the central frequency of the radar pulse). Because the permittivity decreases at higher frequencies in the soils modeled, energy in the reflections shifts toward the front of the waveform, and the amplitudes of trailing lobes in the waveform are suppressed. The effects are subtle, but become more pronounced in models of soils with 10% moisture content by weight.


The title of this meeting, which refers to gauge theories, could equivalently have specified renormalizable quantum field theories. The first quantum field theory arose from the quantization by Dirac, Heisenberg and Pauli of Maxwell’s classical theory of electromagnetism. This immediately revealed the basic problem that although the smallness of the fine-structure constant appeared to give an excellent basis for a power-series expansion, corrections to lowest order calculations gave meaningless infinite results. Quantum electrodynamics (QED ) is, of course, an Abelian gauge theory, and the first major triumph o f fundamental physics after World War II was the removal of the infinities from the theory by the technique of renormalization developed by Schwinger, Feynman and Dyson, stimulated by the measurement of the Lamb shift and the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron. In the intervening years, especially through the beautiful experiments at Cern on the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon, the agreement between this theory and experiment has been pushed to the extreme technical limits of both measurement and calculation.


2013 ◽  
Vol 525 (7) ◽  
pp. 484-492 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rym Bouchendira ◽  
Pierre Cladé ◽  
Saida Guellati-Khélifa ◽  
Francois Nez ◽  
Francois Biraben

2015 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
pp. 1560107
Author(s):  
A. E. Dorokhov ◽  
A. E. Radzhabov ◽  
A. S. Zhevlakov

The electron and muon anomalous magnetic moments (AMM) are measured in experiments and studied in the Standard Model (SM) with the highest precision accessible in particle physics. The comparison of the measured quantity with the SM prediction for the electron AMM provides the best determination of the fine structure constant. The muon AMM is more sensitive to the appearance of New Physics effects and, at present, there appears to be a three- to four-standard deviation between the SM and experiment. The lepton AMMs are pure relativistic quantum correction effects and therefore test the foundations of relativistic quantum field theory in general, and of quantum electrodynamics (QED) and SM in particular, with highest sensitivity. Special attention is paid to the studies of the hadronic contributions to the muon AMM which constitute the main source of theoretical uncertainties of the SM.


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