Related papers: Photon time delay resulting from vacuum fluctuatio…
Particle-antiparticle pairs are predicted by quantum field theory to appear as vacuum fluctuations. The model of the vacuum used here is postulated to have the following properties: To minimize the violation of conservation energy allowed…
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 Brownian motion of a charged test particle coupled to electromagnetic vacuum fluctuations near a perfectly reflecting plane boundary. The presence of the boundary modifies the quantum fluctuations of the electric field, which…
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…
A new process associated with the nonlinear optical properties of the electromagnetic vacuum, as predicted by quantum electrodynamics, is described. This can be called photon acceleration in vacuum, and corresponds to the frequency shift…
Light traveling through the vacuum interacts with vacuum fluctuations similarly to the way that light traveling through a dielectric interacts with ordinary matter. And just as the permittivity of a dielectric can be calculated, the…
The interaction of a particle with vacuum fluctuations--which theoretically exist even in the complete absence of matter--can lead to observable irreversible decoherence if it were possible to switch on and off the particle charge suddenly.…
We give a vacuum description with zero-point density for virtual fluctuations. One of the goals is to explain the origin of the vacuum permittivity and permeability and to calculate their values. In particular, we improve on existing…
Quantum vacuum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field in empty space seem not to produce observable effects over the motion of a charged test particle. However, when a change in the background vacuum state is implemented, as for instance…
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…
Quantum fluctuations of the vacuum are both a surprising and fundamental phenomenon of nature. Understood as virtual photons flitting in and out of existence, they still have a very real impact, \emph{e.g.}, in the Casimir effects and the…
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…
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…
It is commonly agreed that the electromagnetic vacuum is not empty but filled with virtual photons. This leads to effects like Lamb shift and spontaneous emission. Here we argue that if the vacuum has virtual photons it might mean that it…
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…
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…
The main argument against the reality of the electromagnetic quantum vacuum fluctuations is that they do not activate photon detectors. In order to met this objection I propose a model of photocounting which, in the simple case of a light…
Based on the concepts of the quantum field theory of virtual photons as quanta of electromagnetic interaction, we discuss the physical content of the phenomena underlying the principle of quantum uncertainties. We consider the features of…
We propose a quantum model for the vacuum filled of virtual particle pairs. The main originality of this model is to define a density and a life-time of the virtual particles. Compared to the usual QED $(p,E)$ framework, we add here the…
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…