The historical interpretation fills the negative-energy electron states of the Dirac equation and uses the Pauli exclusion principle to prevent additional electrons from falling into them. Removing an electron of energy and charge gives a hole of excitation energy and charge , interpreted as a positron. A quantum field theory instead treats negative-frequency field coefficients as independent antiparticle creation operators in a Fock space, with positive excitation energies after normal ordering. No literal infinite material sea is needed. Bosonic antiparticles also exist, although a filled-sea exclusion argument cannot stabilize bosonic negative-energy levels.
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The Dirac sea is a theoretical concept proposed by the British physicist Paul Dirac in the context of quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. It was introduced to address the implications of Dirac's equation, which describes relativistic electrons and predicts the existence of negative energy states. In simple terms, the Dirac sea was envisioned as a "sea" of infinite negative-energy states that are filled with electrons.