Quantum electrodynamics at small distances

1969
8 pages
Published in:
  • Phys.Rev. 183 (1969) 1292-1299

Citations per year

19691983199720112024051015
Abstract: (APS)
In an earlier paper, it was shown that if the vacuum polarization in quantum electrodynamics is calculated neglecting corrections to internal photon lines, then the charge renormalization diverges as a single power of the logarithm of a cutoff in every order of perturbation theory. It was further shown that if the coefficient of the logarithm f(α0) has a zero, and a further positivity condition of f is satisfied, then the complete unrenormalized-photon Green's function is finite. These results we now relate to the Gell-Mann-Low investigation of renormalized quantum electrodynamics at small distances. In particular, the vanishing of the Gell-Mann-Low function ψ is shown to follow from the vanishing of f. This demonstrates why it is sufficient, from the point of view of the renormalized theory, to study quantum electrodynamics without photon self-energy corrections in order to examine the predictions of the theory at small distances.
  • quantum electrodynamics
  • renormalization