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Infrared divergences in QED revisited

Published version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Kapec, Daniel 
Raclariu, Ana-Maria 
Strominger, Andrew 

Abstract

Recently, it has been shown that the vacuum state in QED is infinitely degenerate. Moreover, a transition among the degenerate vacua is induced in any nontrivial scattering process and determined from the associated soft factor. Conventional computations of scattering amplitudes in QED do not account for this vacuum degeneracy and therefore always give zero. This vanishing of all conventional QED amplitudes is usually attributed to infrared divergences. Here, we show that if these vacuum transitions are properly accounted for, the resulting amplitudes are nonzero and infrared finite. Our construction of finite amplitudes is mathematically equivalent to, and amounts to a physical reinterpretation of, the 1970 construction of Faddeev and Kulish

Description

Keywords

4902 Mathematical Physics, 5107 Particle and High Energy Physics, 49 Mathematical Sciences, 51 Physical Sciences

Journal Title

Physical Review D: Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

1550-2368
2470-0029

Volume Title

96

Publisher

American Physical Society

Rights

All rights reserved
Sponsorship
Science and Technology Facilities Council (ST/P000681/1)