Strong coupling of virtual negative states in the Kapitza-Dirac effect
Phys. Rev. A 113, 052221 – Published 19 May, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/nlzn-11yf
Abstract
Negative states are an intrinsic property of relativistic quantum theory and related to antiparticles in the context of the Dirac sea concept. We show that negative states can dominantly contribute to the diffraction amplitude in the quantum dynamics of the two-photon Kapitza-Dirac effect. We draw our conclusion by investigating solutions from time-dependent perturbation theory, where the perturbative solutions are in match with numeric solutions of the relativistic quantum system and also with the numeric and analytic solutions from the relativistic equations of motion of a classical point-like electron in an external standing-wave light field. While our numeric solutions assume a strong laser field, the analytic solutions indicate that negative state coupling remains dominant for arbitrary low-field amplitudes, where in the single-photon case (Compton scattering) negative state coupling can be mathematically associated with the interaction of a virtual electron-positron pair in the context of a quantized theory in old-fashioned perturbation theory.
