The Relation between Classical and Quantum Electrodynamics

Abstract

Quantum electrodynamics presents intrinsic limitations in the description of physical processes that make it impossible to recover from it the type of description we have in classical electrodynamics. Hence one cannot consider classical electrodynamics as reducing to quantum electrodynamics and being recovered from it by some sort of limiting procedure. Quantum electrodynamics has to be seen not as an more fundamental theory, but as an upgrade of classical electrodynamics, which permits an extension of classical theory to the description of phenomena that, while being related to the conceptual framework of the classical theory, cannot be addressed from the classical theory.