Abstract
This chapter discusses the Hamiltonian approach to electrodynamics for the interpretation of a whole range of electrodynamical problems. The transition from classical to quantum mechanical electrodynamics in the Hamiltonian framework is completely analogous to the transition from classical, Newtonian mechanics to nonrelativistic quantum mechanics. The field of a uniformly moving charge is not at all necessarily a stationary one. The charge can already have moved for some time uniformly; however, the field entrained by it can still differ from the stationary field—which exists when the motion with a constant velocity has been going on for a sufficiently long time. For an electron that moves uniformly for t ≥ 0, there exists the difference between a free radiation field and the transverse entrained field. The actual construction of quantum electrodynamics is completely free from any assumption about the absence of charges and is in no way connected with any identification of a quantized transverse field with a free radiation field, that is, a collection of photons.
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