Quantum Electrodynamics

Mário Bacelar Valente

Quantum electrodynamics presents intrinsic limitations in the description of physical processes that make it impossible to recover from it the type of description we have in classical electrodynamics. Hence one cannot consider classical electrodynamics as reducing to quantum electrodynamics and being recovered from it by some sort of limiting procedure. Quantum electrodynamics has to be seen not as a more fundamental theory, but as an upgrade of classical electrodynamics, which permits an extension of classical theory to the description of phenomena that, while being related to the conceptual framework of the classical theory, cannot be addressed from the classical theory.

Badis Ydri

Mário Bacelar Valente

Quantum electrodynamics presents intrinsic limitations in the description of physical processes that make it impossible to recover from it the type of description we have in classical electrodynamics. Hence one cannot consider classical electrodynamics as reducing to quantum electrodynamics and being recovered from it by some sort of limiting procedure. Quantum electrodynamics has to be seen not as an more fundamental theory, but as an upgrade of classical electrodynamics, which permits an extension of classical theory to the description of phenomena that, while being related to the conceptual framework of the classical theory, cannot be addressed from the classical theory.

Lev I. Plimak, Misha Ivanov, Andrea Aiello +1 more

Quantum electrodynamics under conditions of distinguishability of interacting matter entities, and of controlled actions and back-actions between them, is considered. Such ``mesoscopic quantum electrodynamics'' is shown to share its dynamical structure with the classical stochastic electrodynamics. In formal terms, we demonstrate that all general relations of the mesoscopic quantum electrodynamics may be recast in a form lacking Planck's constant. Mesoscopic quantum electrodynamics is therefore subject to ``doing quantum electrodynamics while thinking classically,'' allowing one to substitute essentially classical considerations for quantum ones without any loss in generality. Implications of these results for the quantum measurement theory are discussed.