Related papers: The linear optical response of the quantum vacuum
Whenever an experiment can be described classically, quantum physics must predict the same outcome. Intuitively, there is nothing quantum about an accelerating observer travelling through a vacuum. It is therefore not surprising that many…
We formulate the classical polarization theory for light by using entanglement analysis. We demonstrate a route to a systematic and consistent measure of ordinary light polarization that extends automatically to a new understanding of the…
Nonlinear Maxwell equations are written up to the third-power deviations from a constant-field background, valid within any local nonlinear electrodynamics including QED with a Euler-Heisenberg (EH) effective Lagrangian. The linear electric…
The degree of polarization of a quantum state can be defined as its Hilbert-Schmidt distance to the set of unpolarized states. We demonstrate that the states optimizing this degree for a fixed average number of photons $\bar{N}$ present a…
Quantum electrodynamics predicts the vacuum to behave as a non-linear medium, including effects such as birefringence. However, for experimentally available field strengths, this vacuum polarizability is extremely small and thus very hard…
A new, relativistically covariant, massive Lorentz Electrodynamics (LED) is presented in which the bare particle has a finite positive bare rest mass and moment of inertia. The particle's electromagnetic self-interaction renormalizes its…
We consider one-dimensional propagation of quantum light in the presence of a block of material, with a full account of dispersion and absorption. The electromagnetic zero-point energy for some frequencies is damped (suppressed) by the…
We introduce a new model for dark energy in the universe in which a small cosmological constant is generated by ordinary electromagnetic vacuum energy. The corresponding virtual photons exist at all frequencies but switch from a…
The evolution of the vacuum state in a time-dependent external electric field of arbitrary polarization is investigated within a nonperturbative framework of quantum kinetic equations (QKEs). In our previous work [Phys. Rev. Res. 6, 043009…
I propose that quantum mechanics is a stochastic theory and quantum phenomena derive from the existence of real vacuum stochastic fields filling space. I revisit stochastic electrodynamics (SED), a theory that studies classical systems of…
A diverse set of observations now compellingly suggest that Universe possesses a nonzero cosmological constant. In the context of quantum-field theory a cosmological constant corresponds to the energy density of the vacuum, and the wanted…
A long-standing prediction of quantum electrodynamics, yet to be experimentally observed, is the interaction between real photons in vacuum. As a consequence of this interaction, the vacuum is expected to become birefringent and dichroic if…
We present a framework for quantization of electromagnetic field in the presence of dielectric media with time-varying optical properties. Considering a microscopic model for the dielectric as a collection of matter fields interacting with…
The theory of point-particles in classical electrodynamics has a well-known problem of infinite self-energy, and the same is true of quantum electrodynamics. Instead of concluding that there is no such thing as a true point-particle, it is…
The energy absorption and energy extinction cross sections of an object in uniform translational motion in free space are Lorentz invariant, but the total energy scattering cross section is not. Indeed, the forward-scattering theorem holds…
One hope to solve the cosmological constant problem is to identify a symmetry principle, based on which the cosmological constant can be reduced either to zero, or to a tiny value. Here, we note that requiring that the vacuum state is…
A cosmology inspired structure for phase space is introduced, which leads to finitization and lattice-like discretization of position and momentum eigenvalues in a preferred, cosmic frame. Lorentz invariance is broken at very high energies,…
Vacuum polarization in QED in a background gravitational field induces interactions which {\it effectively} modify the classical picture of light rays as the null geodesics of spacetime. After a short introduction on the main aspects of the…
The focus of these lectures is on the quantum vacuum subjected to classical electromagnetic fields. To this end we explicitly derive the renowned Heisenberg-Euler effective action in constant electromagnetic fields in a rather pedagogical…
Quantum vacuum experiments are becoming a flexible tool for investigating fundamental physics. They are particularly powerful for searching for new light but weakly interacting degrees of freedom and are thus complementary to…