The possibility to experimentally determine the structure of a fermionic vacuum in quantum electrodynamics

In the standard quantum electrodynamics (QED), the fermionic vacuum is a continuum of randomly created and annihilated virtual electron–positron pairs. In this case, in the strong electromagnetic fields, vacuum creation of real electron–positron pairs is possible. In particular, in the standard QED in a strong uniform electrical field, the Schwinger effect is implemented. Currently, there exist the QED versions with empty fermionic vacuum without fluctuations of creation and annihilation of virtual electron–positron pairs. These versions are the (QED) FW in the Foldy–Wouthuysen representation, the (QED) KG with spinor equations of the Klein–Gordon-type, the (QED) DN with opposite signs in front of particle and antiparticle masses in Dirac equations and with the use of only states with positive energies in S-matrix elements. The latter relates to both real and virtual energy states. In this paper, we propose to carry out a set of experiments at colliders with collisions of heavy ions to determine the nature of the fermionic vacuum. The measurements of the emission of electron–positron pairs depending on the total charge of colliding ions [Formula: see text] show the structure of a fermionic vacuum in QED.