Abstract
In an earlier paper, it was shown that if the vacuum polarization in quantum electrodynamics is calculated neglecting corrections to internal photon lines, then the charge renormalization diverges as a single power of the logarithm of a cutoff in every order of perturbation theory. It was further shown that if the coefficient of the logarithm has a zero, and a further positivity condition of is satisfied, then the complete unrenormalized-photon Green's function is finite. These results we now relate to the Gell-Mann-Low investigation of renormalized quantum electrodynamics at small distances. In particular, the vanishing of the Gell-Mann-Low function is shown to follow from the vanishing of . This demonstrates why it is sufficient, from the point of view of the renormalized theory, to study quantum electrodynamics without photon self-energy corrections in order to examine the predictions of the theory at small distances.
- Received 6 February 1969
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRev.183.1292
©1969 American Physical Society