Virtual Particle - History

History

Paul Dirac was the first to propose that empty space (a vacuum) can be visualized as consisting of a sea of virtual electron-positron pairs, known as the Dirac sea. The Dirac sea has a direct analog to the electronic band structure in crystalline solids as described in solid state physics. Here, particles correspond to conduction electrons, and antiparticles to holes. A variety of interesting phenomena can be attributed to this structure.

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