Related papers: Sonoluminescence as a QED vacuum effect: Probing S…
We develop a general numerical method aimed at studying particle production from vacuum states in a variety of settings. As a first example we look at particle production in a simple cosmological model. We apply the same approach to the…
We consider the vacuum energy of the electromagnetic field in the background of spherically symmetric dielectrics, subject to a cut-off frequency in the dispersion relations. The effect of this frequency dependent boundary condition between…
We show that the Casimir, or zero-point, energy of a dilute dielectric ball, or of a spherical bubble in a dielectric medium, coincides with the sum of the van der Waals energies between the molecules that make up the medium. That energy,…
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…
Zero-point fluctuations in quantum fields give rise to observable forces between material bodies, the so-called Casimir forces. In these lectures I present the theory of the Casimir effect, primarily formulated in terms of Green's…
In the framework of QED with a strong background, we study particle creation (the Schwinger effect) by a time-dependent inverse square electric field. To this end corresponding exact in- and out-solutions of the Dirac and Klein-Gordon…
We contest the recent claim by C. Eberlein (Physical Review Letters 76 (1996) 3842) that sonoluminescence may be explained in terms of quantum vacuum radiation. Due to fundamental physical limitations on bubble surface velocity, the…
The widening phenomenology of Single Bubble Sonoluminescence (SBSL) is shown to be in good agreement with a new approach to condensed matter, based on the QED coherent interactions. Some remarkable properties of SBSL are shown to emerge…
We use the concept of quantum entanglement to analyze the Schwinger effect on an entangled state of a qubit and a bosonic mode coupled with the electric field. As a consequence of the Schwinger production of particle-antiparticle pairs, the…
We consider a theory of scalar QED on a spatially compact 1+1-dimensional spacetime. By considering a constant electric field pointing down the compact dimension, we compute the quantum effective action by integrating out the scalar degrees…
In previous works Suppes and de Barros used a pure particle model to derive interference effects, where individual photons have well-defined trajectories, and hence no wave properties. In the present paper we extend that description to…
In the standard quantum electrodynamics (QED), the fermionic vacuum is a continuum of randomly created and annihilated virtual electron-positron pairs. In this case, in the strong electromagnetic fields, vacuum creation of real…
In [hep-th/0009173] Milton has presented a brief review of some interesting aspects of the theory of the Casimir effect. This comment is aimed at correcting some imprecise statements in that work with respect to the relevance of the Casimir…
Quantum vacuum fluctuations are a direct manifestation of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. The dynamical Casimir effect allows for the observation of these vacuum fluctuations by turning them into real, observable photons. However, the…
We study the dynamical Casimir effect in an electromagnetic cavity containing a Kerr medium. We obtain approximate expressions for the time evolution operator as well as for the number operator in the Heisenberg representation. We have…
We draw attention to the fact that the popular but unproven hypothesis of shock-driven sonoluminescence is incompatible with the reported synchronicity of the single bubble sonoluminescence (SBSL) phenomenon. Moreover, it is not a necessary…
In the context of quantum electrodynamics, the decay of false vacuum leads to the production of electron-positron pair, a phenomenon known as the Schwinger effect. In practical experimental scenarios, producing a pair requires an extremely…
A cavitation bubble inside a liquid, under a specific set of conditions, can get trapped in an antinode of the ultrasonically driven standing wave and periodically emits visible photons (1,2). This conversion of sound to light phenomenon,…
This thesis applies techniques from quantum field theory in curved spacetimes to study particle creation in external fields, focusing on the Schwinger effect (i.e., the production of particle-antiparticle pairs by intense electric fields).…
We provide a pedagogical review of the Schwinger effect, i.e., the non-perturbative production of particle and anti-particle pairs from the vacuum by strong fields, as well as related strong-field phenomena. Beginning with an overview of…