Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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 ...
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]
A proton and an electron can move separately; when they do, the total center-of-mass energy is positive, and such a pair of particles can be described as an ionized atom. Once the electron starts to "orbit" the proton, the energy becomes negative, and a bound state – namely the hydrogen atom – is formed.
By considering the propagation of the negative energy modes of the electron field backward in time, Ernst Stückelberg reached a pictorial understanding of the fact that the particle and antiparticle have equal mass m and spin J but opposite charges q. This allowed him to rewrite perturbation theory precisely in the form of diagrams.
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.
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 ...
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 ...
Robert Oppenheimer argued strongly against the proton being the negative-energy electron solution to Dirac's equation. He asserted that if it were, the hydrogen atom would rapidly self-destruct. [8] Weyl in 1931 showed that the negative-energy electron must have the same mass as that of the positive-energy electron. [9]