Triviality of quantum electrodynamics revisited

Abstract

Quantum electrodynamics is considered to be a trivial theory. This is based on a number of evidences, both numerical and analytical. One of the strong indications for triviality of QED is the existence of the Landau pole for the running coupling. We show that by treating QED as the leading order approximation of an effective field theory and including the next-to-leading order corrections, the Landau pole is removed. Therefore, we conclude that the conjecture, that for reasons of self-consistency, QED needs to be trivial is a mere artefact of the leading order approximation to the corresponding effective field theory.