Related papers: Vacuum Lightcone Fluctuations in a Dielectric
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…
We propose an analog model for quantum gravity effects using nonlinear dielectrics. Fluctuations of the spacetime lightcone are expected in quantum gravity, leading to variations in the flight times of pulses. This effect can also arise in…
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 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…
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…
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…
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…
If one analyzes the effects of electromagnetic vacuum fluctuations upon an electron interference pattern in an approximation in which the electrons follow classical trajectories, an ultraviolet divergence results. It is shown that this…
There are two types of fluctuations in the quantum vacuum: type 1 vacuum fluctuations are on shell and can interact with matter in specific, limited ways that have observable consequences; type 2 vacuum fluctuations are off shell and cannot…
We study the flight time fluctuations in an anisotropic medium inspired by a cosmic string with an effective fluctuating refractive index caused by fluctuating vacuum electric fields, which are analogous to the lightcone fluctuations due to…
It is not possible to detect a vacuum fluctuation without a test particle interacting with the vacuum fluctuation in a measurable manner. In the quantum electrodynamics calculation presented here, a photon traveling through the vacuum is…
Electro-optical sampling has been recently used to perform spectrally-resolved measurements of electromagnetic vacuum fluctuations. In order to understand which information on the ground state of an interacting system can be acquired thanks…
The effects of electromagnetic vacuum fluctuations with the boundary on charged particles is investigated. They may be observed via an electron interference experiment near the conducting plate, where boundary effects of vacuum fluctuations…
This paper is a continuation of a study of the properties and applications of quantum stress tensor fluctuations. Here we treat the vacuum fluctuations of the electromagnetic energy-momentum flux operator which as been averaged in space and…
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…
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…
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…
We study the effects of the electromagnetic vacuum on the motion of a nonrelativistic electron. First, we derive the equation of motion for the expectation value of the electron's position operator. We show how this equation has the same…
We investigate the influence of the vacuum fluctuations of a background electric field over a charged test particle in the presence of a perfectly reflecting flat wall. A switching function connecting different stages of the system is…
The microscopic processes underlying electro-optic sampling of quantum-vacuum fluctuations are discussed, leading to the interpretation of these experiments in terms of an exchange of virtual photons. With this in mind it is shown how one…