Electrons and photons: fact not fiction

The particle Fock space of the matter fields in QED can be constructed usin g the free creation and annihilation operators. However, these particle ope rators are not, even at asymptotically large times, the modes of the matter fields that enter the QED Lagrangian. In this letter we construct the fiel ds which do recover such particle modes at large times. We are thus able to demonstrate for the first time that, contrary to statements found in the l iterature, a relativistic description of charged particles in QED exists. ( C) 2000 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.