# Comment on “Validity of Feynman’s prescription of disregarding the Pauli principle in intermediate states”

## Abstract

In a recent paper Coutinho, Nogami and Tomio \[Phys. Rev. A 59, 2624 (1999)\] presented an example in which, they claim, Feynman’s prescription of disregarding the Pauli principle in intermediate states of perturbation theory fails. We show that, contrary to their claim, Feynman’s prescription is consistent with the exact solution of their example.

PACS numbers: 03.65.Ge, 03.65.Pm, 11.15.Bt, 12.39.Ba

Feynman’s prescription of disregarding the exclusion principle in intermediate states of perturbation theory is based in his observation  that all virtual processes that violate that principle (formally) cancel out order by order in perturbation theory. However, Coutinho, Nogami and Tomio have recently presented an example  in which Feynman’s prescription seems to fail. They calculated (in second order perturbation theory) the energy shift $`WE(\lambda )E(0)`$ of the ground state of the one-particle sector of the one-dimensional bag-model caused by the potential $`V(x)=\lambda x`$. The calculation was performed using both prescriptions, i.e., either excluding virtual transitions to occupied states, in accordance with the Pauli principle (method I), or including such transitions, as suggested by Feynman (method II). It turns out that the result depends on the prescription used; in the massless case, for instance, $`W_\mathrm{I}0`$ and $`W_{\mathrm{II}}=0`$. In view of this discrepancy, Coutinho et al. suggested that one should abandon Feynman’s prescription and remain faithful to the Pauli principle in every step of the calculation.

The purpose of this Comment is to show that the opposite alternative is the correct one. More precisely, we show that $`W_{\mathrm{II}}`$ agrees (while $`W_\mathrm{I}`$ does not) with the exact value of $`W`$ in the massless case.

To calculate $`W`$ we need to solve the Dirac equation

$$(H_0+\lambda x)\psi (x)=ϵ\psi (x),$$
(1)   
where $`H_0`$ is the Hamiltonian of the bag model (see  for its definition). With the conventions of ref. , Eq. (1) can be written explicitly in the massless case as

$$\left(\begin{array}{cc}\lambda xϵ& _x\\ _x& \lambda xϵ\end{array}\right)\left(\begin{array}{c}u\\ v\end{array}\right)=\left(\begin{array}{c}0\\ 0\end{array}\right)(|x|a),$$
(2)   
with $`u`$ and $`v`$ subject to the boundary conditions $`u(\pm a)=v(\pm a)`$. Defining $`w_\pm =u\pm iv`$, we can rewrite (2) as

$$_xw_\pm i(\lambda xϵ)w_\pm =0,$$
(3)   
whose general solution is

$$w_\pm (x)=C_\pm e^{\pm i\left(\frac{\lambda }{2}x^2ϵx\right)}.$$
(4)   
The boundary conditions on $`u`$ and $`v`$ turn into $`w_+(\pm a)=iw_{}(\pm a)`$. This gives two relations between $`C_+`$ and $`C_{}`$:

$`C_+`$ $`=`$ $`iC_{}e^{i\left(\lambda a^2+2ϵa\right)},`$ (5)   
$`C_+`$ $`=`$ $`iC_{}e^{i\left(\lambda a^22ϵa\right)}.`$ (6)   
Dividing (5) by (6) and solving for $`ϵ`$ gives

$$ϵ=(2n+1)\frac{\pi }{4a}(n=0,\pm 1,\pm 2,\mathrm{}).$$
(7)   
Since the energy levels do not depend on $`\lambda `$, the energy shift $`W`$ is zero. This is precisely the result obtained by Coutinho et al. using Feynman’s prescription in perturbation theory.

The author acknowledges the financial support from FAPESP.