Recent results on the vacuum polarization induced by a thin string of magnetic flux lead us to suggest an analogue of the Copenhagen ‘‘flux spaghetti’’ QCD vacuum as a possible mechanism for avoiding the divergence of perturbative QED, thus permitting a consistent completion of the full, nonperturbative theory. The mechanism appears to operate for spinor, but not scalar, QED.

• Received 7 March 1994

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.51.919