Related papers: Gedanken experiments with Casimir forces, vacuum e…
Quantum vacuum energy has been known to have observable consequences since 1948 when Casimir calculated the force of attraction between parallel uncharged plates, a phenomenon confirmed experimentally with ever increasing precision. Casimir…
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…
Casimir effect is the attractive force which acts between two plane parallel, closely spaced, uncharged, metallic plates in vacuum. This phenomenon was predicted theoretically in 1948 and reliably investigated experimentally only in recent…
We obtain new expressions for the Casimir energy between plates that are mimicked by the most general possible boundary conditions allowed by the principles of quantum field theory. This result enables to provide the quantum vacuum energy…
It has been argued since 1948, when it was experimentally demonstrated, that the Casimir effect-where two non-charged conducting plates have a weak but measurable force on each other dependent on the inverse fourth power of the distance…
A fundamental prediction of quantum mechanics is that there are random fluctuations everywhere in a vacuum because of the zero-point energy. Remarkably, quantum electromagnetic fluctuations can induce a measurable force between neutral…
Casimir energy in presence of a weak gravitational field is discussed taking into account the issues related to energy and its conservation in a curved background. It is well-known that there are inherent difficulties in defining energy in…
Large contributions to the near closure of the Universe and to the acceleration of its expansion are due to the gravitation of components of the stress-energy tensor other than its mass density. To familiarise astronomers with the…
For more than 35 years theorists have studied quantum or Casimir friction, which occurs when two smooth bodies move transversely to each other, experiencing a frictional dissipative force due to quantum electromagnetic fluctuations, which…
When the vacuum is partitioned by material boundaries with arbitrary shape, one can define the zero-point energy and the free energy of the electromagnetic waves in it: this can be done, independently of the nature of the boundaries, in the…
Conventional rockets are not a suitable technology for deep space missions. Chemical rockets require a very large weight of propellant, travel very slowly compared to light speed, and require significant energy to maintain operation over…
During the past few decades, abundant evidence for physics beyond the two standard models of particle physics and cosmology was found. Yet, we are tapping into the dark regarding our understanding of the dark sector. For more than a…
In order to clarify why the zero-point energy associated with the vacuum fluctuations cannot be a candidate for the dark energy in the universe, a comparison with the Casimir effect is analyzed in some detail. A principle of epistemology is…
Doubt continues to linger over the reality of quantum vacuum energy. There is some question whether fluctuating fields gravitate at all, or do so anomalously. Here we show that for the simple case of parallel conducting plates, the…
Several years ago we demonstrated that the Casimir energy for perfectly reflecting and imperfectly reflecting parallel plates gravitated normally, that is, obeyed the equivalence principle. At that time the divergences in the theory were…
The Casimir force, which results from the confinement of the quantum mechanical zero-point fluctuations of the electromagnetic fields, has received significant attention in recent years for its effect on micro- and nano-scale mechanical…
We study Casimir effect in equilibrium and non-equilibrium photon gas in the frame of quantum kinetic theory for $U(1)$ gauge field. We derive first the transport, constraint and gauge fixing equations for the photon number distribution…
The force exerted by the gravitational field on a Casimir cavity in terms of Archimedes force of vacuum is discussed, the force that can be tested against observation is identified, and it is shown that the present technology makes it…
Whether gravity is quantized remains an open question. To shed light on this problem, various Gedankenexperiments have been proposed. One popular example is an interference experiment with a massive system that interacts gravitationally…
In this paper, we study the Casimir effect in a curved spacetime described by gravitational actions quadratic in the curvature. In particular, we consider the dynamics of a massless scalar field confined between two nearby plates and…