  It is not possible to detect a vacuum fluctuation without a test particle
interacting with the vacuum fluctuation in a measurable manner. In the quantum
electrodynamics calculation presented here, a photon traveling through the
vacuum is used as the test particle to determine properties of the vacuum
resulting from vacuum fluctuations. In particular, this article (1) discusses
the mathematical procedure for describing a lepton-antilepton bound state that
is a vacuum fluctuation, (2) describes the photon interacting with and being
incorporated into the bound state to form a quasi-stationary bound state, and
(3) calculates the electromagnetic decay rate of the quasi-stationary bound
state.
