Related papers: An Analog Model for Quantum Lightcone Fluctuations…
A model for observable effects of electromagnetic vacuum fluctuations is presented. The model involves a probe pulse which traverses a slab of nonlinear optical material with a nonzero second order polarizability. We argue that the pulse…
We study a model for quantum lightcone fluctuations in which vacuum fluctuations of the electric field and of the squared electric field in a nonlinear dielectric material produce variations in the flight times of probe pulses. When this…
The quantum lightcone fluctuations in flat spacetimes with compactified spatial dimensions or with boundaries are examined. The discussion is based upon a model in which the source of the underlying metric fluctuations is taken to be…
We treat the effects of compactified spatial dimensions on the propagation of light in the uncompactified directions in the context of linearized quantum gravity. We find that the flight times of pulses can fluctuate due to modification of…
Quantum fluctuations of lightcone are examined in a 4-dimensional spacetime with two parallel planes. Both the Dirichlet and the Neumann boundary conditions are considered. In all the cases we have studied, quantum lightcone fluctuations…
A model of a fluctuating lightcone due to a bath of gravitons is further investigated. The flight times of photons between a source and a detector may be either longer or shorter than the light propagation time in the background classical…
Gravitons in a squeezed vacuum state, the natural result of quantum creation in the early universe or by black holes, will introduce metric fluctuations. These metric fluctuations will introduce fluctuations of the lightcone. It is shown…
We propose a mechanism for the enhancement of vacuum fluctuations by means of a classical field. The basic idea is that if an observable quantity depends quadratically upon a quantum field, such as the electric field, then the application…
A localized charged particle oscillating near a reflecting boundary is considered as a model for non-cancellation of vacuum fluctuations. Although the mean velocity of the particle is sinusoidal, the velocity variance produced by vacuum…
One of the most common expectations of a quantum theory of gravity is that space-time is uncertain or fluctuating at microscopic scales, making it a stochastic medium for particle propagation. Particles traversing this space-time may…
That light propagating in a gravitational field gets frequency-shifted is one of the basic consequences of any metric theory of gravity rooted in the equivalence principle. At the same time, also a time dependent material's refractive index…
We argue that quantum-gravitational fluctuations in the space-time background give the vacuum non-trivial optical properties that include diffusion and consequent uncertainties in the arrival times of photons, causing stochastic…
We present a microscopic model for light-cone fluctuations ``in vacuo'', which incorporates a treatment of quantum-gravitational recoil effects induced by energetic particles. Treating defects in space-time as solitons in string theory, we…
We treat a model based upon nonlinear optics for the semiclassical gravitational effects of quantum fields upon light propagation. Our model uses a nonlinear material with a nonzero third order polarizability. Here a probe light pulse…
Quantum fluctuations on curved spacetimes cause the emission of pairs of particles from the quantum vacuum, as in the Hawking effect from black holes. We use an optical analogue to gravity to investigate the influence of the curvature on…
Quantum vacuum fluctuations tend to be strongly anti-correlated, which reduces their observable effects. However, time dependence can upset the cancellation of these anti-correlated fluctuations and greatly enhance their effects. This form…
The effects of small extra dimensions upon quantum fluctuations of the lightcone are examined. We argue that compactified extra dimensions modify the quantum fluctuations of gravitational field so as to induce lightcone fluctuations. This…
In this work we consider lightcone fluctuation effects in a five-dimensional spacetime arising as a consequence of the compactification of the extra dimension via a quasiperiodic condition, characterized by a phase angle $2\pi\alpha$. By…
We study the flight time fluctuations of a probe light propagating in a slab of nonlinear optical material with an effective fluctuating refractive index caused by thermal fluctuations of background photons at a temperature $T$, which are…
We consider the nonunitary quantum dynamics of neutral massless scalar particles used to model photons around a massive gravitational lens. The gravitational interaction between the lensing mass and asymptotically free particles is…