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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 ...
In theoretical physics, negative mass is a hypothetical type of exotic matter whose mass is of opposite sign to the mass of normal matter, e.g. −1 kg. [1] [2] Such matter would violate one or more energy conditions and exhibit strange properties such as the oppositely oriented acceleration for an applied force orientation.
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]
The situation in quantum field theory is rather different: the expectation value of the energy density can be negative at any given point. In fact, things are even worse: by tuning the state of the quantum matter field, the expectation value of the local energy density can be made arbitrarily negative.
Negative mass would possess some strange properties, such as accelerating in the direction opposite of applied force.Despite being inconsistent with the expected behavior of "normal" matter, negative mass is mathematically consistent and introduces no violation of conservation of momentum or energy.
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 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.