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According to the theory of the Dirac sea, developed by Paul Dirac in 1930, the vacuum of space is full of negative energy. This theory was developed to explain the anomaly of negative-energy quantum states predicted by the Dirac equation. A year later, after work by Weyl, the negative energy concept was abandoned and replaced by a theory of ...
Quantum inequalities [1] are local constraints on the magnitude and extent of distributions of negative energy density in space-time. Initially conceived to clear up a long-standing problem in quantum field theory (namely, the potential for unconstrained negative energy density at a point), quantum inequalities have proven to have a diverse range of applications.
Dirac hole theory is a theory in quantum mechanics, named after English theoretical physicist Paul Dirac, who introduced it in 1929. [1] The theory poses that the continuum of negative energy states, that are solutions to the Dirac equation, are filled with electrons, and the vacancies in this continuum (holes) are manifested as positrons with energy and momentum that are the negative of those ...
The Dirac sea is a theoretical model of the electron vacuum as an infinite sea of electrons with negative energy, now called positrons. It was first postulated by the British physicist Paul Dirac in 1930 [1] to explain the anomalous negative-energy quantum states predicted by the relativistically-correct Dirac equation for electrons. [2]
To cope with disagreements, the vacuum energy is described as a virtual energy potential of positive and negative energy. [93] In quantum perturbation theory, it is sometimes said that the contribution of one-loop and multi-loop Feynman diagrams to elementary particle propagators are the contribution of vacuum fluctuations, or the zero-point ...
Thus, according to the theory, even the vacuum has a vastly complex structure and all calculations of quantum field theory must be made in relation to this model of the vacuum. The theory considers vacuum to implicitly have the same properties as a particle, such as spin or polarization in the case of light, energy, and so on. According to the ...
The Casimir effect shows that quantum field theory allows the energy density in very small regions of space to be negative relative to the ordinary vacuum energy, and the energy densities cannot be arbitrarily negative as the theory breaks down at atomic distances.
The Dirac equation still predicts negative energy solutions, [6] [24] so Dirac postulated that negative energy states are always occupied, because according to the Pauli principle, electronic transitions from positive to negative energy levels in atoms would be forbidden. See Dirac sea for details.