Constantin Meis is Professor at the National Institute for Nuclear Science and Technology and Director of Researches at the CEA (French Atomic Energy Commission – Saclay). He is also appointed as an international expert for the CEA and he is member of the editorial board of the journal “Radiation” (MDPI), Switzerland.
He studied physics at the University Paris 7 where he obtained in 1984 the “Maitrise de Physique”, with specialization in Atomic and Nuclear Physics. Then he got the Master Degree (DEA) in Atomic Physics, Quantum Optics and Lasers at Orsay University (Paris Sud) in 1985. He is holder of PhD in Atomic Physics obtained also at Orsay University in 1988 and of HDR (Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches) obtained at Marseille University in 2003.
After his PhD thesis he started his career in 1988 as physicist at the CEA Saclay where he worked on many theoretical studies related to the computational modelling of the electromagnetic waves propagation and absorption in magnetized low temperature metallic plasmas. After 1995 he participated in the CEA program of nuclear waste disposal by working using atomic scale simulations (DFT and Molecular Dynamics) for the study of radiation effects in materials.
In 2001 he took the head of the Physics and Materials Unit of the National Institute for Nuclear Science and Technology (INSTN – CEA) where he became Professor and then Director of Researches.
He is the author of the book “Light and Vacuum” on advanced Quantum Electrodynamics edited by World Scientific in 2014 and of the augmented 2nd Edition in 2017. He also participated in many international editions as an author of specific chapters on quantum electrodynamics and the single photon states.
Atomic Physics, Quantum Optics and Lasers
Reappraisal of QED mathematical and physical fundamentals
The Quantum Electrodynamics fundamental drawbacks are revisited and analyzed. It is question of the photon vector potential amplitude operators, the electromagnetic field harmonic oscillator Hamiltonian with the associated zero-point energy singularity and the electron-vacuum interaction Hamiltonian. Without stating postulates or advancing any hypothesis it is shown that the QED ambiguities can be readily overcome by enhancing the quantization of the vector potential amplitude to a single photon level. This process do not compromise any of the QED achievements. Ensuing the single photon vector potential quantization the electromagnetic vacuum, a zero-energy universal field depending on the photon creation and annihilation operators, appears naturally complementing coherently the normal ordering Hamiltonian without involving singularities. It permits the establishment of an electron-vacuum interaction Hamiltonian which could not be defined in QED previously. Finally, it leads to the definition of a real photon wave function as a probability amplitude, normalized within an intrinsic quantization volume and satisfying Maxwell’s propagation equation as well as Schrödinger’s equation for both the photon energy and vector potential.
Keywords: QED singularities, photons, photon wave function, photon electric field, photon quantization volume, electromagnetic field Hamiltonian, zero-point energy, quantum vacuum