Related papers: Vacuum polarization on the spinning circle
We study the simplest geometrical particle model associated with null paths in four-dimensional Minkowski space-time. The action is given by the pseudo-arclength of the particle worldline. We show that the reduced classical phase space of…
The focusing of the vacuum modes of a quantized field by a parabolic mirror is investigated. We use a geometric optics approximation to calculate the energy density and mean squared field averages for scalar and electromagnetic fields near…
The notion of vacuum fluctuations of the gravitational field plays important role in cosmology. The strong variable gravitational field of the very early Universe amplifies these fluctuations and transforms them into macroscopical…
We study the role that both vacuum fluctuations and vacuum entanglement of a scalar field play in identifying the spacetime topology, which is not prescribed from first principles---neither in general relativity or quantum gravity. We…
The tunnelling of virtual matter-antimatter pairs from the quantum vacuum in multidimensions is studied. We consider electric backgrounds as a linear combination of a spatial Sauter field and, interchangeably, certain weaker time dependent…
We study the interaction of a massless quantized spinor field with the gravitational filed of N parallel static cosmic strings by using a perturbative approach. We show that the presence of more than one cosmic string gives rise to an…
We present a comprehensive introduction to spacetime algebra that emphasizes its practicality and power as a tool for the study of electromagnetism. We carefully develop this natural (Clifford) algebra of the Minkowski spacetime geometry,…
The fact that in Minkowski space, space and time are both quantized does not have to be introduced as a new postulate in physics, but can actually be derived by combining certain features of General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. This is…
We explore bosonic strings and Type II superstrings in the simplest time dependent backgrounds, namely orbifolds of Minkowski space by time reversal and some spatial reflections. We show that there are no negative norm physical excitations.…
A massless scalar field minimally coupled to gravity and propagating in the Schwarzschild spacetime is considered. After dimensional reduction under spherical symmetry the resulting 2D field theory is canonically quantized and the…
We develop a novel framework for describing quantum fluctuations in field theory, with a focus on cosmological applications. Our method uniquely circumvents the use of operator/Hilbert-space formalism, instead relying on a systematic…
It is proposed that space is a four-dimensional Euclidean space with universal time. Originally this space was filled with a uniform substance, pictured as a liquid, which at some time became supercooled. Our universe began as a nucleation…
We compute the vacuum polarization for a massless, conformally coupled scalar field on the covering space of global, four-dimensional, anti-de Sitter space-time. Since anti-de Sitter space is not globally hyperbolic, boundary conditions…
It is argued here that the quantum computation of the vacuum pressure must take into account the contribution of zero-point oscillations of a rank-three gauge field. The field A_{\mu\nu\rho} possesses no radiative degrees of freedom, its…
Our local Hubble volume might be contained within a bubble that nucleated in a false vacuum with only two large spatial dimensions. We study bubble collisions in this scenario and find that they generate gravity waves, which are made…
We calculate the Casimir-Polder intermolecular potential using an effective Hamiltonian recently introduced. We show that the potential can be expressed in terms of the dynamical polarizabilities of the two atoms and the equal-time spatial…
In general quantum systems there are two kinds of spacetime modes, those that fluctuate and those that do not. Fluctuating modes have normalizable wavefunctions. In the context of 2D gravity and ``non-critical'' string theory these are…
We demonstrate that high Tc superconductors exhibit hyperbolic metamaterial behavior in the far infrared and THz frequency ranges. In the THz range the hyperbolic behavior occurs only in the normal state, while no propagating modes exist in…
Classical mechanics, relativity, electrodynamics and quantum mechanics are often depicted as separate realms of physics, each with its own formalism and notion. This remains unsatisfactory with respect to the unity of nature and to the…
This thesis is concerned with the development of a general method to compute renormalised local observables for quantum matter fields, in a given quantum state, on a rotating black hole spacetime. The rotating black hole may be surrounded…