com, quantum electrodynamics is the quantum field theory that describes the properties of electromagnetic radiation and its interaction with electrically charged matter in the framework of quantum theory. Now, to me, that is still complete jumble, so I will dissect and simplify. Quantum field theory is simply the .
study of the quantum mechanical interaction of elementary particles and fields. Elementary particles (electrons, protons, neutrons, quarks, etc.) are the most basic physical constituents of the universe, and fields are regions throughout which a force may be exerted. Electromagnetic radiation is the energy radiated in the form of a wave as a result of the motion of electric charges. Quantum theory is the modern physical theory concerned with the emission and absorption of energy by matter and with the motion of material particles. Therefore, QED is the theory that describes how the energy from the motion of electric charges interacts with electrically charged matter when dealing only with the interaction of elementary particles and fields. Okay, so it may not be simpler, but it is more comprehendible. .
QED deals with the creation of elementary particles from electromagnetic energy, and with the reverse processes in which a particle and its antiparticle annihilate each other and produce energy. QED was the first theory to resolve the difficulties of building a consistent, fully quantum description of fields and the creation and annihilation of quantum particles. Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, Julian Schwinger, and Richard Feynman received the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics for its development, although each developed the theory in the late 1940s entirely independent of the other two. They each developed the theory by refining the discovery made by P.A.M. Dirac of an equation describing the motion and spin of electrons that incorporated both the quantum theory and the theory of special relativity (Einstein's, of course).