A new method that automatically regularizes scattering amplitudes

Abstract

We present a new regularization procedure called autoregularization. The new procedure regularizes the divergences, encountered previously in a scattering process, using the intrinsic scale of the process. We use autoregularization to calculate the amplitudes of several scattering processes in QED and compare the calculations with experimental measurements over a broad range of center-of-momentum energies (≲MeV to ≳200 GeV). The calculated amplitudes are found to be in good agreement with experimental data. 1 1 Specifically, the O(α) correction to electron’s gyromagnetic ratio predicted by autoregularization agrees with experimental measurement to within 0.06% (Section ), which is to be compared to Schwinger’s O(α) correction which agrees with experimental measurement to within 0.15%; the O(α) estimate of the Lamb shift predicted by autoregularization agrees with the experimental measurements to within 0.33% (section ); the running fine structure constant predicted by autoregularization at O(α) agrees with the prediction of cutoff regularization to within 0.8% over one to four orders of magnitude above the electron’s mass scale (section ); the tree-level prediction of autoregularization for Compton scattering is in better agreement with experimental data than the prediction of the well-known Klein-Nishina formula by about 4.02% (section ); the tree-level predicition of autoregularization for pair annihilation at center-of-momentum energy of 206.671 GeV agrees with the experimental data about 0.67 % better than the prediction of the standard QED (section ). To test autoregularization in a non-Abelian gauge theory, we calculate the QCD coupling constant at 1-loop and show that, like the known regularization schemes, autoregularization also predicts asymptotic freedom in QCD. Finally, we show that the vacuum energy density of the free fields in the Standard Model, calculated using autoregularization, is smaller than the current estimate of the cosmic critical density.