dirac sea generator
negative energy
think mirror
up is down
down is up
“One gets over the difficulty in the classical theory by arbitrarily excluding those solutions that have a negative E. One cannot do this in the quantum theory, since in general a perturbation will cause transitions from states with E positive to states with E negative.” [ Proceedings of the Royal Society A, Vol. 117, 1928, p. 610.
In the study of electrons, we get a weird problem, where our equations predict electrons with negative energy. The negative energies will go from 0 to negative infinity. This is a problem, firstly, because we have never seen a single negative-energy particle. Moreover, it is a problem because electrons like to lose energy and go to lower energies whenever they can. If there are negative energies, then electrons will always have a lower energy state they can go to, so electrons should always be losing energy.