Related papers: Basic randomness of nature and ether-drift experim…
In the data of the ether-drift experiments there might be sizable fluctuations superposed on the smooth sinusoidal modulations due to the Earth's rotation and orbital revolution. These fluctuations might reflect the stochastic nature of the…
Basic foundational aspects of both quantum theory and relativity might induce to represent the physical vacuum as an underlying highly turbulent fluid. By explicit numerical simulations, we show that a form of statistically isotropic and…
According to several authors, gravity might be a long-wavelength phenomenon emerging in some 'hydrodynamic limit' from the same physical, flat-space vacuum viewed as a form of superfluid medium. In this framework, light might propagate in…
The condensation of elementary quanta and their macroscopic occupation of the same quantum state, say k=0 in some reference frame Sigma, is the essential ingredient of the degenerate vacuum of present-day elementary particle physics. This…
The idea of a `condensed' vacuum state is generally accepted in modern elementary particle physics. We argue that this should motivate a new generation of precise `ether-drift' experiments with present-day technology.
Arguments are gived for the plausibility that quantum mechanics is a stochastic theory and that many quantum phenomena derive from the existence of a real noise consisting of vacuum fluctuations of all fundamental fields existing in nature.…
According to some authors, gravity might be an emergent phenomenon in a fundamentally flat space-time. In this case the speed of light in the vacuum would not coincide exactly with the basic parameter "c" entering Lorentz transformations…
A study of the non-dissipative Brownian motion in vacuum is presented. The noise source associated to the stochastic process assumed in this work is vacuum fluctuations of some quantum field capable of interact with a massive particle. For…
"\textit{The noise is the signal}"[R. Landauer, Nature \textbf{392}, 658 (1998)] emphasizes the rich information content encoded in fluctuations. This paper assesses the dynamical role of fluctuations of a quantum system driven far from…
The outcome of a single quantum experiment is unpredictable, except in a pure-state limit. The definite process that takes place in the apparatus may either be intrinsically random or be explainable from a deeper theory. While the first…
We investigate the problem of metric fluctuations in the presence of the vacuum fluctuations of matter fields and critically assess the usual assertion that vacuum energy implies a Planckian cosmological constant. A new stochastic classical…
Motivated by the critical remarks of several authors, we have re-analyzed the classical ether-drift experiments with the conclusion that the small observed deviations should not be neglected. In fact, within the framework of Lorentzian…
We study the dynamics of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a one-dimensional optical lattice in the limit of weak atom-atom interactions, including an approximate model for quantum fluctuations. A pulsating dynamical instability in which atoms…
The spontaneous decay of an excited atom by photon emission is one of the most common and elementary physical process present in nature and in laboratories. The decay is random in time with constant probability density, as it can be…
Recent progress in electro-optic sampling has allowed direct access to the fluctuations of the electromagnetic ground state. Here, we present a theoretical formalism that allows for an in-depth characterisation and interpretation of such…
In principle, by accepting the idea of a non-zero vacuum energy, the physical vacuum of present particle physics might represent a preferred reference frame. By treating this quantum vacuum as a relativistic medium, the non-zero…
We show that the spatial structure of electromagnetic vacuum fluctuations, predicted by quantum electrodynamics, can be indirectly observed using thermal noise at radio frequencies. Using simple lab equipment like coaxial cables and RF…
Quantum mechanics is considered to arise from an underlying classical structure (``hidden variable theory'', ``sub-quantum mechanics''), where quantum fluctuations follow from a physical noise mechanism. The stability of the hydrogen ground…
Quantum vacuum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field result in two signatures on a harmonically trapped charged particle: a shift from the natural trap frequency and generation of quantum coherences. We assess the role of the…
The effect of decoherence, induced by spontaneous emission, on the dynamics of cold atoms periodically kicked by an optical lattice is experimentally and theoretically studied. Ideally, the mean energy growth is essentially unaffected by…