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Does self-energy correction leading to a modification in the mass of the electron can be called radiative mass generation? In Zee model of radiative neutrino mass generation, the helicity of the neutrino changes but such a thing does not happen in QED self-energy correction because photon cannot change the chirality of the electron. I'm little confused.

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No. In the electron case the self-energy makes the (bare) mass an ill-defined quantity unless you specify a renormalization scheme.

Usually one takes the dressed electron mass (i.e. the bare mass plus all radiative corrections) to be equal to the measured electron mass in the limit of vanishing external momentum.

All the radiative corrections then do is introduce a dependency of the mass on momentum, an effect that can be measured (although I'm not sure whether it has been measured for the electron since it is so light).

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  • $\begingroup$ @Neuneck- But how is this different from the Zee model of neutrino mass generation? $\endgroup$
    – SRS
    Jan 19, 2015 at 14:28
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    $\begingroup$ @SRS In the Zee Model, the Neutrinos start out without a mass term. It is only upon "integrating out" the additional scalar, i.e. considering the one-loop effective action, that they get a mass term. Since this mass term is generated by quantum effects, it is small and called "radiative". This is fundamentally different from QED, where the mass term is there even in the classical (tree-level) action. $\endgroup$
    – Neuneck
    Jan 19, 2015 at 14:41

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