6533b839fe1ef96bd12a5d07
RESEARCH PRODUCT
Structure of the electromagnetic field around the free electron in nonrelativistic QED.
G. M. SalamoneGiuseppe Compagnosubject
Electromagnetic fieldPhysicsFree particlePhotonSelf-energyQuantum electrodynamicsQuantum mechanicsVirtual particleElectronOptical fieldQuantum field theoryAtomic and Molecular Physics and Opticsdescription
We study, within the framework of nonrelativistic QED, the structure of the electromagnetic field in the neighborhood of a free spinless electron dressed by the interaction with the vacuum field. We introduce a suitable formalism that correlates electron position and field operators. The quantum average value obtained by applying correlated field operator to the dressed state gives the average value of the corresponding field quantity as a function of distance from the electron. The results obtained separately for the electric- and magnetic-field energy density around the particle display contributions that have quantum origin and that cancel in summing of the two, yielding the total energy density. In the total energy density only contributions that have a classical analog remain. These results are compared with those for the electromagnetic structure around a neutral atom, obtained in previous work (R. Passante and E. A. Power, Phys. Rev. A 35, 188 (1987)).
| year | journal | country | edition | language |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1991-11-01 | Physical review. A, Atomic, molecular, and optical physics |