Some new results concerning the vacuum in Dirac Hole Theory

Abstract

In Dirac's hole theory the vacuum state is generally believed to be the state of minimum energy. It will be shown that this is not, in fact, the case and that there must exist states in hole theory with less energy than the vacuum state. It will be shown that energy can be extracted from the hole theory vacuum state through the application of an electric field.

Accepted by Physica Scripta, 19 pages

References in corpus (4)

• Validity of Feynman's prescription of disregarding the Pauli principle in intermediate states
• Some remarks on Dirac's hole theory versus quantum field theory
• Dirac's hole theory versus quantum field theory
• Some differences between Dirac's hole theory and quantum field theory

Cited by in corpus (8)

• A new look at the problem of gauge invariance in quantum field theory
• An exact solution to the Dirac equation for a time dependent Hamiltonian in 1-1D space-time
• Dirac's hole theory and the Pauli principle: clearing up the confusion
• Some remarks on point split commutators
• Some new results concerning the QFT vacuum in the Heisenberg picture
• An interesting result concerning the lower bound to the energy in the Heisenberg picture
• The effect of point split regularization on the sign of the Casimir energy
• The vacuum state and minimum energy in Dirac's hole theory