Abstract
At the end of Chapter 7 we concluded that all attenrpts to date to construct a quantum theory of radiation employing the classical electromagnetic field had failed to describe the phenomena either qualitatively or quantitatively. Despite some of its conceptual difficulties, quantum field theory (QFT) remains the one calculational tool able to predict the data to the great precision derived from experiment. In this chapter we shall provide details of some quantum-field-theoretic descriptions of the principal radiative processes, particularly as related to bound-state problems: energy-level shifts, spontaneous emission, vacuum polarization, and magnetic effects. There are two major reasons for including this final chapter. The first is that, despite our central goal of demonstrating how far one can proceed toward a theory of leptons and fields without quantizing the fields, it is important to see just how QFT is able to produce some of the correct results. And secondly, it provides an opportunity to demonstrate more clearly how closely quantum electrodynamics (QED) actually parallels the classical field theory in the end.
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Grandy, W.T. (1991). Quantum Electrodynamics. In: Relativistic Quantum Mechanics of Leptons and Fields. Fundamental Theories of Physics, vol 41. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3302-9_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3302-9_10
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