Related papers: Towards a QED-Based Vacuum Energy
A QED-based bootstrap mechanism, appearing at sufficiently small space-time scales, is suggested as an explanation for the "dark" vacuum energy that may be able to accelerate the universe. Very small-scale vacuum currents are allowed to…
A QED-based symmetry breaking/bootstrap mechanism, appearing at sufficiently small space-time distances, is suggested as an explanation for the vacuum energy that furnished the initial impulse for Inflation, and continues on, to the present…
A QED--based "bootstrap" mechanism is suggested as an explanation for the vacuum energy that furnished the initial impulse for Inflation, and continues on to provide present day Dark Energy. Virtual vacuum fluctuations are assumed to…
The stress-energy tensor of the quantum vacuum is studied for the particular case of quantum electrodynamics (QED), that is a fictituous universe where only the electromagnetic and the electron-positron fields exist. The integrals involved…
The features of vacuum particle creation in an external classical field are studied for simplest external field models in $3 + 1$ dimensional QED. The investigation is based on a kinetic equation that is a nonperturbative consequence of the…
The origin of the observed acceleration of the expansion of the universe is a major problem of modern cosmology and theoretical physics. Simple estimations of the contribution of vacuum to the density energy of the universe in quantum field…
A short review about vacuum energy and the cosmological constant is presented. The observed acceleration of the universe introduces a new meV energy scale. The problem is that, theoretically, the predicted vacuum energy is many orders of…
In a recent publication [Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 143602] we have shown using a QED approach that, in the presence of a magnetic field, the quantum vacuum coupled to a chiral molecule provides a kinetic momentum directed along the magnetic…
Quantum field theory predicts that vacuum energy (or what is the same, cosmological constant) should be 50-100 orders of magnitude larger than the existing astronomical limit. A very brief review of possible solutions of this problem is…
Physicists have speculated about the properties of the quantum vacuum for at least 85 years; however, only recently have they understood the quantum vacuum sufficiently well to begin making testable predictions. Specifically, using…
The ability to achieve ultra-strong coupling between light and matter promises to bring about new means to control material properties, new concepts for manipulating light at the atomic scale, and fundamentally new insights into quantum…
Nonperturbative methods have been well-developed for QED with the so-called t-electric potential steps. In this case a calculation technique is based on the existence of specific exact solutions (in and out solutions) of the Dirac equation.…
At energies much less than the electron mass $m$ the effects of quantum fluctuations in the vacuum due to virtual electron loops can be included by extending the Maxwell Lagrangian by additional non-renormalizable terms corresponding to the…
The canonical cosmological model to explain the recent acceleration of the universe relies on a cosmological constant, and most dynamical dark energy and modified gravity model alternatives are based on scalar fields. Still, further…
The properties of the quantum electrodynamic (QED) vacuum in general, and of the nuclear vacuum (ground) state in particular are determined by virtual processes implying the excitation of a photon and of an electron--positron pair in the…
We investigate the gravitational property of the quantum vacuum by treating its large energy density predicted by quantum field theory seriously and assuming that it does gravitate to obey the equivalence principle of general relativity. We…
As the microscopic structure of the deep relativistic quantum vacuum is unknown, a phenomenological approach ($q$-theory) has been proposed to describe the vacuum degrees of freedom and the dynamics of the vacuum energy after the Big Bang.…
Previously we conjectured that extremely high Electromagnetic (EM) fields in a vacuum generate a gravitational field that causes Maxwell's equations to no longer be linear. This results in a "4-force" in the field configuration space, also…
This tutorial introduces the theory of macroscopic QED, where a Hamiltonian is found that represents the electromagnetic field interacting with a dispersive, dissipative material. Using a one dimensional theory as motivation, we build up…
We consider that the universe is trapped in an excited vacuum state and the resulting excitation energy provides the observed dark energy. We explore the conditions under which this situation can arise from physics already known.…