arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Othmar Steinmann.
An elementary perturbative method of handling the Higgs-Kibble models and deriving their relevant properties, is described. It is based on Wightman field theory and avoids some of the mathematical weaknesses of the standard treatments.
The connection between the Gupta-Bleuler formulation and the Coulomb gauge formulation of QED is discussed. It is argued that the two formulations are not connected by a gauge transformation. Nor can the state space of the Coulomb gauge be identified with a subspace of the Gupta-Bleuler space. Instead a more indirect connection between the two formulations via a detour through the Wightman reconstruction theorem is proposed.
A direct definition of the intrinsic magnetic moment of the electron is given, which does not use infrared regularizations and interactions with external fields. The expression does not depend on the unavoidable ambiguities of the definition of a 1-electron state (exact form of its soft photon cloud). The method leads to the same analytic expression as the conventional approach, thus preserving the excellent agreement between theory and experiment.