Related papers: The temperature of the quantum vacuum
In this article, we show that a quantum gas, a collection of massive, non-interacting, indistinguishable quantum particles can be realized as a thermodynamic machine as an artifact of energy quantization and hence bears no classical analog.…
The Casimir effect is a quantum phenomenon rooted in the fact that vacuum fluctuations of quantum fields are affected by the presence of physical objects and boundaries. Since the energy spectrum of the vacuum fluctuations depends on…
Using the model in which the vacuum is filled with virtual fermion pairs we propose an effective description of photon propagation compatible with the wave-particle duality and the quantum field theory. In this model the origin of the…
A fundamental prediction of quantum mechanics is that there are random fluctuations everywhere in a vacuum because of the zero-point energy. Remarkably, quantum electromagnetic fluctuations can induce a measurable force between neutral…
We show that virtual particles, despite being unobservable, can be described by quantum operators which can be interpreted under certain conditions as valid qubit quantum states. For a single virtual fermion, we prove that such a state is a…
In this thesis we analyze the quantum vacuum properties of non-abelian gauge theories. We calculate the energy of the quantum vacuum by non-perturbative methods using Monte Carlo simulations, focusing on the contribution of boundary effects…
The Casimir effect is a physical manifestation of zero point energy of quantum vacuum. In a relativistic quantum field theory, Poincar\'e symmetry of the theory seems, at first sight, to imply that non-zero vacuum energy is inconsistent…
In discussions of the cosmological constant, the Casimir effect is often invoked as decisive evidence that the zero point energies of quantum fields are "real''. On the contrary, Casimir effects can be formulated and Casimir forces can be…
Zero-point fluctuations in quantum fields give rise to observable forces between material bodies, the so-called Casimir forces. In this lecture I present some results of the theory of the Casimir effect, primarily formulated in terms of…
The wave-particle duality of the vacuum states of quantum fields is considered and the particle-like property of the vacuum state of a quantum field is proposed as a vacuum-particle which carries the vacuum-energy and the vacuum-momentum of…
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…
A general expression for the temperature of a finite-dimensional quantum system is deduced from thermodynamic arguments. At equilibrium, this magnitude coincides with the standard thermodynamic temperature. Furthermore, it is well-defined…
In quantum field theory, the vacuum is popularly considered to be a complex medium populated with virtual particle + antiparticle pairs. To an observer experiencing uniform acceleration, it is generally held that these virtual particles…
An intriguing consequence of quantum field theory is that vacuum is not empty space; it is full of quantum fluctuating electromagnetic fields, or virtual photons, corresponding to their zero-point energy, even though the average number of…
The theory of false vacuum decay in a thermal system may have a cross-over from predominantly thermal transitions to quantum transitions as the temperature is decreased. New numerical methods and results are presented here that can be used…
In this article, we address the problem of how temperature of a quantum system is observed. By proposing a thought experiment, we argue that temperature must be conceived as an operator and its measurement must necessarily accompany a…
Both real and virtual photons can be involved in light-matter interactions. A famous example of the observable implications of virtual photons -- vacuum fluctuations of the quantum electromagnetic field -- is the Casimir effect. Since…
We propose a phenomenological approach to quantum liquids of particles obeying generalized statistics of a fermionic type, in the spirit of the Landau Fermi liquid theory. The approach is developed for fractional exclusion statistics. We…
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…
For the free Fermion gas at thermodynamic equilibrium, the temperature which represents the averaged kinetic energy is demonstrated to have the proper property which is invariant under the Lorentz boost, using the conceptions of the…