I conceed that my arguments on so-called "vacuum fluctuations" have not been well thought out. I am now reading more about the Casimir effect; however, I am of the opinion that the experimental manifestation of this force does not change the fact that the uncertainty relationship of position and momentum for a time-independent wave-intensity cannot have anything to do with the actual momentum of the particle with mass that it represents. If a particle with mass moves relative to an observer, the wave-intensity must also move relative to the observer; the wave will thus not be a stationary time-independent wave. "Vacuum fluctuations", if they are indeed "vacuum" and not just the manifestation of Heisenberg's uncertainty relationship for time and energy for existing waves, does not change this in any way. Thus if you have to represent the quantum state of an electron by a time-independent "stationary" wave-intensity (whatever your interpretation of the wave) it implies that you are within the same inertial reference frame relative to which the wave intensity is stationary. If another observer is moving relative to this reference frame, he/she will have to describe the wave function as moving relative to him/her; i.e. the wave-intensity must be time-dependent. Only in this case can one argue that the "particle" with mass has actual momentum; i.e. there must be relative movement between the observing apparatus and the "particle" and its accompanying wave. This is the case when electrons diffract.
The Heisenberg uncertainty relationship for "momentum" and position of a time-independent wave is nothing else than the relationship between position- and k-space that is valid for that wave. This relationsip is determined by the boundary conditions. So what Heisenberg's uncertainty relationship for "momentum" and position implies is that when the boundary conditions change the wave has to morph, but any morphing cannot violate this relationship: i.e when the wave morphs to occupy a smaller region in space, it must expand in k-space and vice versa. Thus when a wave "collapses" to morph into a "particle-electron" it is NOT a probability that becomes an actuality, but a large wave morphing into a localised wave whose centre of mass seems to act like a "point particle", when observing the wave from "outside" the distributed charge within the wave.
By applying this reasoning consistently, one finds that the quantum-mechanical ground-state energy of a free electron within an inertial reference frame moving with the electron, is the rest-mass of the electron. This means that the electron can also have excited states within such an inertial reference frame: i.e. the muon and tau. With these assumptions one finds that there are no "magic tricks" like renormalization required to model the free electron.
So I will appreciate it if you would concentrate on my arguments about position and momentum, and the relevance of Heisenberg's relationship of "momentum" and position, when applied to an electron.
NOTE ADDED LATER: I have been misled by a paper I cannot now find. The Casimir force is definitely not a van der Waals' interaction; however, I have another idea that relates to "vacuum fluctuations" but is not "vacuum fluctuations" as presently modelled in QED. It relates to the ability of a wave to lend and borrow energy for limited times; i.e. to Heisenberg's uncertainty relationship for energy and time. Photons can then disentagle from the surface electron waves into the gap between the mirrors. According to my proposed wave model for the electron, this energy comes from the wave component over the fourth dimension; i.e. it is like a vacuum fluctuation but not quite trhe same. The same argument can be applied to model Rabi oscillations, anomalous g-factor etc. It still needs refinement but I would like to thank DA Morgan and Uncle Al for bringing this to my attention.
