Related papers: Negative Energy Densities in Quantum Field Theory
We study the effects of the electromagnetic subvacuum fluctuations on the dynamics of a nonrelativistic charged particle in a wavepacket. The influence from the quantum field is expected to give an additional effect to the velocity…
The regularized vacuum energy (or energy density) of a quantum field subjected to static external conditions is shown to satisfy a certain partial differential equation with respect to two variables, the mass and the "time" (ultraviolet…
A certain vector-tensor theory is revisited. Our attention is focused on cosmology. Against previous suggestions based on preliminary studies, it is shown that, if the energy density of the vector field is large enough to play the role of…
In a recent paper [J. Math. Phys. 47 082303 (2006)], Quantum Energy Inequalities were used to place simple geometrical bounds on the energy densities of quantum fields in Minkowskian spacetime regions. Here, we refine this analysis for…
We consider and review the emergence of singular energy densities and field fluctuations at sharp boundaries or point-like field sources in the vacuum. The presence of singular energy densities of a field may be relevant from a conceptual…
The weak energy condition is known to fail in general when applied to expectation values of the the energy momentum tensor in flat space quantum field theory. It is shown how the usual counter arguments against its validity are no longer…
We obtain new constraints for the modular energy of general states by using the monotonicity property of relative entropy. In some cases, modular energy can be related to the energy density of states and these constraints lead to…
It has recently been proposed that vacuum energy is zero in spite of the quantum-field fluctuations that occur everywhere, even at absolute zero. The implication is that dark energy must have a different origin, unrelated to vacuum energy.…
We explore two hypotheses. First, the possibility that the quantum vacuum energy density of the Casimir effect contributes to a (local) gravitational vacuum energy density. Second, the possibility that a change in the gravitational coupling…
Following a short discussion of some unresolved issues in the standard model of cosmology (considered to be a generic LCDM model with flat geometry and an early period of inflation), an update on the current state of research regarding the…
Particle-antiparticle pairs are predicted by quantum field theory to appear as vacuum fluctuations. The model of the vacuum used here is postulated to have the following properties: To minimize the violation of conservation energy allowed…
In this brief review, we examine the theoretical consistency and viability of phantom dark energy. Almost all data sets from cosmological probes are compatible with dark energy of the phantom variety (i.e., equation-of-state parameter…
In classical physics the energy density of a field is always positive. However this does not hold true for quantum physics where the energy density of a field can be locally negative. There are limits on the weighted average of this…
Traditional quantum field theory can lead to enormous zero-point energy, which markedly disagrees with experiment. Unfortunately, this situation is built into conventional canonical quantization procedures. For identical classical theories,…
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…
The assumption that the vacuum is the minimum energy state, invariant under unitary transformations, is fundamental to quantum field theory. However, the assertion that the conservation of charge implies that the equal time commutator of…
An important yet perplexing result from work in the 90s and 00s is the near-unity value of the ratio of fluctuations in the vacuum energy density of quantum fields to the mean in a collection of generic spacetimes. This was done by way of…
Quantum energy inequalities (QEIs) express restrictions on the extent to which weighted averages of the renormalized energy density can take negative expectation values within a quantum field theory. Here we derive, for the first time, QEIs…
In the cosmological context an effective quantum field theory describing the behavior of visible matter in the universe is characterized with its inherent UV cutoff and also with an IR scale that is set by the cosmological (particle)…
We compute the expectations of the squares of the electric and magnetic fields in the vacuum region outside a half-space filled with a uniform dispersive dielectric. We find a positive energy density of the electromagnetic field which…