# How does this paper relate to standard QED?

This paper proposes a microscopic mechanism for generating the values of $c, \epsilon_0, \mu_0$. They state that their vacuum is assumed to contain ephemeral (meaning existing within the limits of the HUP) fermion/antifermion pairs. This affects the mechanism of photon propagation as follows:

When a real photon propagates in vacuum, it interacts with and is temporarily captured by an ephemeral pair. As soon as the pair disappears, it releases the photon to its initial energy and momentum state. The photon continues to propagate with an infinite bare velocity. Then the photon interacts again with another ephemeral pair and so on. The delay on the photon propagation produced by these successive interactions implies a renormalisation of this bare velocity to a finite value

Now this description of what happens to the photon sounds awfully like a heuristic description you might give to the photon self energy contribution in standard QED perturbation theory, where, although it's used in the renormalization procedure, it most certainly doesn't make any changes to the velocity of light.

Can someone explain how what's being proposed here relates to standard QED. I don't see how they fit together.

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Do we throw relativity down the toilet? :-) –  Siva Apr 29 '13 at 9:11
Just ran into your question and decided to comment, just in case: this article in NO way relates to the standard QED. –  Peter Kravchuk May 2 '13 at 19:48