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Quantum electrodynamics, (QED), is a quantum theory of the interactions of charged particles with the electromagnetic field. It describes mathematically not only all interactions of light with matter but also those of charged particles with one another. QED is a relativistic theory in that Albert Einstein's theory of special relativity is built into each of its equations. Because the behaviour of atoms and molecules is primarily electromagnetic in nature, all of atomic physics can be considered a test laboratory for the theory. Some of the most precise tests of QED have been experiments dealing with the properties of muons. The magnetic moment of this type of subatomic particle, for example, has been shown to agree with the theory to six significant digits. Agreement of such high accuracy makes QED one of the most successful physical theories so far devised.
In 1926 the British physicist P.A.M. Dirac laid the foundations for QED with his discovery of an equation describing the motion and spin of electrons that incorporated both the quantum theory and the theory of special relativity. The QED theory was refined and fully developed in the late 1940s by Richard P. Feynman, Julian S. Schwinger, and Tomonaga Shin'ichirx, independently of one another. QED rests on the idea that charged particles (e.g., electrons and positrons) interact by emitting and absorbing photons, the particles of light that transmit electromagnetic forces. These photons are virtual that is, they cannot be seen or detected in any way because their existence violates the conservation of energy and momentum. The particle exchange is merely the "force" of the interaction, because the interacting particles change their speed and direction of travel as they release or absorb the energy of a photon. Photons also can be emitted in a free state, in which case they may be observed. The interaction of two charged particles occurs in a series of processes of increasing complexity. In the simplest, only one virtual photon is involved; in a second-order process, there are two; and so forth. The processes correspond to all the possible ways in which the particles can interact by the exchange of virtual photons and each of them can be represented graphically by means of the diagrams developed by Feynman. Besides furnishing an intuitive picture of the process being considered, this type of diagram prescribes precisely how to calculate the variable involved.
Each subatomic process becomes computationally more difficult than the previous one, and there are an infinite number of processes. The QED theory, however, states that the more complex the process (i.e., the presence of additional virtual photons), the smaller the probability of its occurrence. For each level of complexity, a factor of (1/137)2 decreases the contribution of the process, and thus, after a few levels the contribution is negligible. This factor, symbolized by a, is called the fine-structure constant and serves as a measure of the strength of the electromagnetic interaction. It equals e2/c, where e is the electron charge, {is Planck's constant (q.v.) divided by 2*3,14, and c is the speed of light.
QED is often called a perturbation theory because of the smallness of the fine-structure constant and the resultant decreasing size of higher order contributions. This relative simplicity and the success of QED have made it a model for other quantum field theories. Finally, the picture of electromagnetic interactions as the exchange of virtual particles has been carried over to the theories of the strong, weak, and gravitational forces.