The possibility to experimentally determine the structure of a fermionic vacuum in quantum electrodynamics

Abstract

In the standard quantum electrodynamics (QED), the fermionic vacuum is a continuum of randomly created and annihilated virtual electron-positron pairs. In this case, in the strong electromagnetic fields, vacuum creation of real electron-positron pairs is possible. In particular, in the standard QED in a strong uniform electrical field, the Schwinger effect is implemented. Currently, there exist the QED versions with empty fermionic vacuum without fluctuations of creation and annihilation of virtual electron-positron pairs. These versions are the (QED)FW in the Foldy-Wouthuysen representation, the $(QED)_{KG}$ with spinor equations of the Klein-Gordon type, the $(QED)_{DN}$ with opposite signs in front of particle and antiparticle masses in Dirac equations and with the use of only states with positive energies in S-matrix elements. The latter relates to both real and virtual energy states. In this paper, we propose to carry out a set of experiments at colliders with collisions of heavy ions to determine the nature of the fermionic vacuum. The measurements of the emission of electron-positron pairs depending on the total charge of colliding ions $Z_{\Sigma} = 146 \div 184$ show the structure of a fermionic vacuum in quantum electrodynamics.