Related papers: Quantum vacuum effects from boundaries of designer…
The existence of irreducible field fluctuations in vacuum is an important prediction of quantum theory. These fluctuations have many observable consequences, like the Casimir effect which is now measured with good accuracy and agreement…
We study the properties of a class of quantum field theories endowed with an equal number of anti commuting and commuting field variables, the most common example being the supersymmetric models. Based on the scaling properties of the…
We assume that particles are point-like objects even when not observed. We report on the consequences of our assumption within the realm of quantum theory. An important consequence is the necessity of vacuum fields to account for particle…
Considering the fundamental cutoff applied by the uncertainty relations' limit on virtual particles' frequency in the quantum vacuum, it is shown that the vacuum energy density is proportional to the inverse of the forth power of the…
A huge discrepancy between the zero-point energy calculated from quantum theory and the observed quantity in the Universe has been one of the most illusive problems in physics. In order to examine the measurability of zero-point energy, we…
Quantum field theory allows for the suppression of vacuum fluctuations, leading to sub-vacuum phenomena. One of these is the appearance of local negative energy density. Selected aspects of negative energy will be reviewed, including the…
The issue of the vacuum energy of quantum fields is briefly reviewed. It is argued that this energy is normally either much too large or much too small to account for the dark energy, However, there are a few proposals in which it would be…
Vacuum energies are computed in light-cone field theories to obtain effective potentials which determine vacuum condensate. Quantization surfaces interpolating between the light-like surface and the usual spatial one are useful to define…
We discuss the main myths related to the vacuum energy and cosmological constant, such as: ``unbearable lightness of space-time''; the dominating contribution of zero point energy of quantum fields to the vacuum energy; non-zero vacuum…
A quantum field theory has finite zero-point energy if the sum over all boson modes $b$ of the $n$th power of the boson mass $ m_b^n $ equals the sum over all fermion modes $f$ of the $n$th power of the fermion mass $ m_f^n $ for $n= 0$, 2,…
The vacuum fluctuations of all quantum fields filling the universe are supposed to leave enormous energy and pressure contributions which are incompatible with observations. It has been recently suggested that, when the effective nature of…
A model for the localized quantum vacuum is proposed in which the zero-point energy of the quantum electromagnetic field originates in energy- and momentum-conserving transitions of material systems from their ground state to an unstable…
In quantum theory the vacuum is defined as a state of minimum energy that is devoid of particles but still not completely empty. It is perhaps more surprising that its definition depends on the geometry of the system and on the trajectory…
Physicists have speculated about the properties of the quantum vacuum for at least 85 years; however, only recently have they understood the quantum vacuum sufficiently well to begin making testable predictions. Specifically, using…
The vacuum energy is computed for a scalar field in a noncommutative background in several models of noncommutative geometry. One may expect that the noncommutativity introduces a natural cutoff on the ultraviolet divergences of field…
An intriguing consequence of quantum field theory is that vacuum is not empty space; it is full of quantum fluctuating electromagnetic fields, or virtual photons, corresponding to their zero-point energy, even though the average number of…
We discuss the weight of vacuum energy in various contexts. First, we compute the vacuum energy for flat spacetimes of the form $\mathbb{T}^3 \times \mathbb{R}$, where $\mathbb{T}^3$ stands for a general 3-torus. We discover a quite simple…
Quantum field theory predicts that vacuum energy (or what is the same, cosmological constant) should be 50-100 orders of magnitude larger than the existing astronomical limit. A very brief review of possible solutions of this problem is…
We argue that calculating vacuum energy requires quantum field theory whose axioms are adapted to curved spacetime. In this context, we suggest that non-zero vacuum energy is connected to dynamical breaking of electroweak symmetry. The…
It is suggested that the vacuum expectation of the quantum vacuum energy-momentum is zero, but quantum fluctuations give rise to a space-time curvature equivalent to that of a cosmological constant or dark energy. Calculations within…