4 ms·

But if the energy is finite, soesnt it mean that you can only produce so much virtual particles?

• gus_massa 9y ago
  That's the nice part of virtual particles. If they are short lived enough they can be so many or so massive as you wish. Well, not as you wish because there are a lot of rules that relate the amount of particles, the mas and momentum of each one and the available energy. At low energy the effect of the virtual particles is negligible (except in a very few weird cases like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamb_shift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamb_shift ). At high energy the probability of the virtual particles is bigger, so their effect is easier to measure. I like this drawing of that shows the firs three steps of diagrams with virtual particles that are necessary to calculate the magnetic moment of the electron: http://www.strings.ph.qmul.ac.uk/~bigdraw/feynman/slide3.html http://www.strings.ph.qmul.ac.uk/~bigdraw/feynman/slide3.htm...