FERMIONS FROM PHOTONS - BOSONIZATION OF QED IN 2+1 DIMENSIONS

We perform the complete bosonization of (2+1)-dimensional QED with one fermionic flavor in the Hamiltonian formalism. The Fermi operators ar e explicitly constructed in terms of the vector potential and the elec tric field. We carefully specify the regularization procedure involved in the definition of these operators, and calculate the fermionic bil inears and the energy-momentum tensor. The algebra of bilinears exhibi ts the Schwinger terms which also appear in perturbation theory. The b osonic Hamiltonian is a local, polynomial functional of A(i) and E(i), and we check explicitly the Lorentz invariance of the resulting boson ic theory. Our construction is conceptually very similar to Mandelstam 's construction in 1+1 dimensions, and is dissimilar from the recent b osonization attempts in 2+1 dimensions, which hinge crucially on the p resence of a Chern-Simons term.