Reverse Engineering Approach to Quantum Electrodynamics

[Aerosol]

Abstract

The S matrix of e–e scattering has the structure of a projection operator that projects incoming separable product

states onto entangled two-electron states. In this projection operator the empirical value of the fine-structure constant

? acts as a normalization factor. When the structure of the two-particle state space is known, a theoretical value of

the normalization factor can be calculated. For an irreducible two-particle representation of the Poincar´e group, the

calculated normalization factor matches Wyler’s semi-empirical formula for the fine-structure constant ?. The empirical

value of ?, therefore, provides experimental evidence that the state space of two interacting electrons belongs to an

irreducible two-particle representation of the Poincar´e group.

Keywords: quantum electrodynamics; fine-structure constant; entanglement; gauge invariance; reverse

engineering

Parts of this article were presented at the 7th International Conference On Quantum Theory and Symmetries

(QTS7) in Prague 2011 [1].

Read more: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1004.0820.pdf