Strong, random field behavior of the Euclidean Dirac propagator.

The one-loop effective action of quantum electrodynamics in four dimensions is shown to be controlled by the Euclidean Dirac propagator G in a background potential. After separating the photon self-energy and photon-photon scattering graphs from the effective action the remainder is known to be the logarithm of an entire function of the electric charge of order 4 under mild regularity assumptions on the potential. This input together with quantum electrodynamics' (QED) lack of an ultrastable vacuum constrain the strong field behavior of G. It is shown that G vanishes in the strong field limit. The relevance of this result to the decoupling of QED from the remainder of the electroweak model for large amplitude variations of the Maxwell field is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]