A rigorous justification of the Mittleman’s approach to the Dirac–Fock model

In this paper, we study the relationship between the Dirac–Fock model and the electron-positron Hartree–Fock model. We justify the Dirac–Fock model as a variational approximation of QED when the vacuum polarization is neglected and when the fine structure constant \(\alpha \) $\alpha$ is small and the velocity of light c is large. As a byproduct, we also prove, when \(\alpha \) $\alpha$ is small or c is large, the no-unfilled shells theory in the Dirac–Fock theory for atoms and molecules. The proof is based on some new properties of the Dirac–Fock model.