Precision Tests of QED - Other Tests

Other Tests

  • QED predicts that the photon is a massless particle. A variety of highly sensitive tests have proven that the photon mass is either zero, or else extraordinarily small. One type of these tests, for example, work by checking Coulomb's law at high accuracy, as Coulomb's law would be modified if the photon mass were nonzero. See the article Photon#Experimental checks on photon mass.
  • QED predicts that when electrons get very close to each other, they behave as if they had a higher electric charge, due to vacuum polarization. This prediction was experimentally verified in 1997 using the TRISTAN particle accelerator in Japan.

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