Quantum Electrodynamics at Large Distances II: Nature of the Dominant Singularities

Abstract

Accurate calculations of macroscopic and mesoscopic properties in quantum electrodynamics require careful treatment of infrared divergences: standard treatments introduce spurious large-distances effects. A method for computing these properties was developed in a companion paper. That method depends upon a result obtained here about the nature of the singularities that produce the dominant large-distance behaviour. If all particles in a quantum field theory have non-zero mass then the Landau-Nakanishi diagrams give strong conditions on the singularities of the scattering functions. These conditions are severely weakened in quantum electrodynamics by effects of points where photon momenta vanish. A new kind of Landau-Nakanishi diagram is developed here. It is geared specifically to the pole-decomposition functions that dominate the macroscopic behaviour in quantum electrodynamics, and leads to strong results for these functions at points where photon momenta vanish.

arXiv comment40 pages, 11 encapsulated postscript figures, latexed, math_macros.tex can be found on Archive. full postscript available from http://theorl.lbl.gov/www/theorgroup/papers/35972.ps

References in corpus (1)

• Quantum Electrodynamics at Large Distances I: Extracting the Correspondence-Principle Part.

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Charges from Dressed Matter: Construction
• Quantum Electrodynamics at Large Distances III: Verification of Pole Factorization and the Correspondence Principle
• Quantum Electrodynamics at Large Distances I: Extracting the Correspondence-Principle Part.
• Infra-Red Asymptotic Dynamics of Gauge Invariant Charged Fields: QED versus QCD