Collective excitations of the QED vacuum

Using relativistic Green's-function techniques we examined single-electron excitations from the occupied Dirac sea in the presence of strong external fields. The energies of these excited states are determined taking into account the electron-electron interaction. We also evaluate relativistic transition strengths incorporating retardation, which represents a direct measure of correlation effects. The shifts in excitation energies are computed to be lower than 0.5%, while the correlated transition strengths never deviate by more than 10% from their bare values. A major conclusion is that we found no evidence for collectivity in the electron-positron field around heavy and superheavy nuclei. © 1993 The American Physical Society.

Duke Scholars

Author Berndt Mueller Physics