A short, simple enough question, if you know about field theory, which unfortunately I don't.
Are vacuum fluctuations more probable near a charge, for example an electron with negative charge?
I think this is one of the problems the renormalization procedure resolves, but if they are more probable, is there a clear mechanism for this?
Are vacuum fluctuations more probable near a charge, for example an electron with negative charge?
I'm going to say no, because renormalization is more to do the virtual particles of QED rather than vacuum fluctuations. As for virtual particles, see Matt Strassler's article and note this:
"The best way to approach this concept, I believe, is to forget you ever saw the word 'particle' in the term. A virtual particle is not a particle at all".
They aren't short-lived real particles that pop into existence like spontaneous worms from mud. Instead they're "field quanta". It's like you divvy up an electron's field into chunks and say each is a virtual particle. The field is more intense closer to the electron, or a proton. Then when the electron and the proton attract one another they "exchange field" such that the hydrogen atom doesn't have much in the way of a field left. But there aren't any actual photons flying back and forth. Hydrogen atoms don't twinkle. And vacuum fluctuations aren't the same thing as virtual particles. For an analogy, if a real photon is an oceanic swell wave barrelling along at 8 knots, the virtual photons are a sloped abstract chunks of it, and vacuum fluctuations are something like the little ripplets on the surface of the sea. They're responsible for the Casimir effect. But the force there is very weak, unlike the immensely strong Coulomb force between the electron and proton.
