Related papers: Comment on "Quantum Friction - Fact or Fiction?"
This is an essay sketching the line of thinking which has led the present author to propose the constituent or atomic model of gravitation more than a decade ago. It turns out that viewing the problem of gravitation as a quantum many body…
The condensed matter examples, in which the effective gravity appears in the low-energy corner as one of the collective modes of quantum vacuum, provide a possible answer to the question, why the vacuum energy is so small. This answer comes…
The applicability of the Lifshitz formula is discussed to the case of two thick parallel plates made of real metal. The usual description of the zero-point vacuum oscillations on the background of the frequency-dependent dielectric…
A theory of electronic friction is developed using the exact factorization of the electron-nuclear wavefunction. No assumption is made regarding the electronic bath, which can be made of independent or interacting electrons, and the nuclei…
Quantum mechanics---the theory describing the fundamental workings of nature---is famously counterintuitive: it predicts that a particle can be in two places at the same time, and that two remote particles can be inextricably and…
By regarding the Lifshitz expression for the Casimir free energy on the real frequency axis rather than the imaginary Matsubara frequencies as is customary, new light is shed on the ongoing debate regarding the thermodynamical consistency…
This review, intended for a popular audience, was originally published in the online magazine Aeon on 28 January 2014. It is reproduced on the arxiv with permission. The online version (without references) can be found at…
I address the question whether the wave function in quantum theory exists as a real (ontic) quantity or not. For this purpose, I discuss the essentials of the quantum formalism and emphasize the central role of the superposition principle.…
This work formulates and gives grounds for general principles and theorems that question the energy function doctrine and its quantum version as a genuine law of nature without borders of adequacy. The emphasis is on the domain where the…
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 quantum motion of nuclei, generally ignored in sliding friction, can become important for an atom, ion, or light molecule sliding in an optical lattice. The density-matrix-calculated evolution of a quantum Prandtl-Tomlinson model,…
Theoretical physics has faced many challenges since the advent of quantum mechanics. Recently, Frauchiger and Renner have presented a no-go theorem, which makes quantum mechanics more controversial. However, from our perspective, the…
The search for a new scientific theory is typically prompted by an encounter with something in the world that cannot be explained by current theories. This is not the case for the search for a theory of quantum gravity, which has been…
More than a speculative technology, quantum computing seems to challenge our most basic intuitions about how the physical world should behave. In this thesis I show that, while some intuitions from classical computer science must be…
It is argued that the zero-point energies of free quantum fields diverge at most quadratically and not quartically, as is generally believed. This is a consequence of the relativistic invariance which requires that the energy density of the…
Since its discovery, quantum theory has proven to be one of the most precise theories ever made. Measurement processes, however, do not seem to be governed by the unitary law of quantum mechanics, and one can ask if the theory is complete.…
No theory of physics has been collectively scientifically verified in an experiment so far. It is pointed out that probabilistic structure of quantum theory can be collectively scientifically verified in an experiment. It is also argued…
Quantum gravity has been so elusive because we have tried to approach it by two paths which can never meet: quantum mechanics and general relativity. These contradict each other not only in superdense regimes, but also in the vacuum. We…
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…
We show how a simple calculation leads to the surprising result that an excited two-level atom moving through vacuum sees a tiny friction force of first order in v/c. At first sight this seems to be in obvious contradiction to other…