相关论文: Light and divergences: History and outlook
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…
We show that the interpretation of $\mathbf{D}=\varepsilon_{0} \mathbf{E}$ as vacuum polarization is consistent with quantum electrodynamics. A free electromagnetic field polarizes the vacuum but the magnetization and polarization currents…
In quantum theory the vacuum is defined as a state of minimum energy that is devoid of particles but still not completely empty. It is perhaps more surprising that its definition depends on the geometry of the system and on the trajectory…
Using the Pauli-Villars regularization and arguments from convex analysis, we construct solutions to the classical time-independent Maxwell equations in Dirac's vacuum, in the presence of small external electromagnetic sources. The vacuum…
In the classical theory of electromagnetism, the permittivity and the permeability of free space are constants whose magnitudes do not seem to possess any deeper physical meaning. By replacing the free space of classical physics with the…
Arguments are gived for the plausibility that quantum mechanics is a stochastic theory and that many quantum phenomena derive from the existence of a real noise consisting of vacuum fluctuations of all fundamental fields existing in nature.…
The structure of solids and their phases is mainly determined by static Coulomb forces while the coupling of charges to the dynamical, i.e., quantized degrees of freedom of the electromagnetic field plays only a secondary role. Recently, it…
There are unsolved problems in physics leading to difficulties with Maxwell equations that are not removed by and not directly associated with quantum mechanics. Recently a number of extended and modified theories have therefore been put…
Basic foundational aspects of both quantum theory and relativity might induce to represent the physical vacuum as an underlying highly turbulent fluid. By explicit numerical simulations, we show that a form of statistically isotropic and…
The quantum vacuum constitutes a fascinating medium of study, in particular since near-future laser facilities will be able to probe the nonlinear nature of this vacuum. There has been a large number of proposed tests of the low-energy,…
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…
Light in a dielectric medium moves slower than in vacuum. The corresponding electromagnetic field equations are then no longer invariant under ordinary Lorentz transformations, but only under such transformations corresponding to this…
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 hypothesis is proposed that under the approximation that the quantum equations of motion reduce to the classical ones, the quantum vacuum also reduces to the classical vacuum--the empty space. The vacuum energy of QED is studied under…
Birefringence is one of the fascinating properties of the vacuum of quantum electrodynamics (QED) in strong electromagnetic fields. The scattering of linearly polarized incident probe photons into a perpendicularly polarized mode provides a…
The electromagnetic fields in Maxwell's theory satisfy linear equations in the classical vacuum. This is modified in classical non-linear electrodynamic theories. To date there has been little experimental evidence that any of these…
We carry out a Dirac sea reinterpretation of a discretized version of the Hamiltonian of quantum electrodynamics (QED), and analyze the perturbed vacuum in the continuum limit. We argue that if certain operators can be shown to be the…
We assume that particles are point-like objects even when not observed. We report on the consequences of our assumption within the realm of quantum theory. An important consequence is the necessity of vacuum fields to account for particle…
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 QED vacuum polarization in external monochromatic plane-wave electromagnetic fields is calculated with spatial and temporal variations of the external fields being taken into account. We develop a perturbation theory to calculate the…