Vacuum State - Physical Nature of The Quantum Vacuum

Physical Nature of The Quantum Vacuum

According to Astrid Lambrecht (2002): "When one empties out a space of all matter and lowers the temperature to absolute zero, one produces in a Gedankenexperiment the quantum vacuum state."

According to Fowler & Guggenheim (1939/1965), the third law of thermodynamics may be precisely enunciated as follows:

It is impossible by any procedure, no matter how idealized, to reduce any assembly to the absolute zero in a finite number of operations. (See also.)

According to Milonni (1994): "... all quantum fields have zero-point energies and vacuum fluctuations." This means that there is a component of the quantum vacuum respectively for each component field (considered in the conceptual absence of the other fields), such as the electromagnetic field, the Dirac electron-positron field, and so on.

According to Mandl & Shaw (1984): quantum field "processes ... only occur through interactions of fields." This means that any physically detectable interaction between a given component field and itself occurs only through the presence of other fields, and that, when the other fields are in their vacuum states, the combined vacuum field mediates any interactions between a given field and itself. For example, in the absence of particles other than photons, photon-photon interaction can occur only through the vacuum state of some other field, for example through the Dirac electron-positron vacuum field; this is associated with the concept of vacuum polarization.

According to Milonni (1994), some of the effects attributed to the vacuum electromagnetic field can have several physical interpretations, some more conventional than others. The Casimir attraction between uncharged conductive plates is often proposed as an example of an effect of the vacuum electromagnetic field. Schwinger, DeRaad, and Milton (1978) are cited by Milonni (1994) as validly, though unconventionally, explaining the Casimir effect with a model in which "the vacuum is regarded as truly a state with all physical properties equal to zero." In this model, the observed phenomena are explained as the effects of the electron motions on the electromagnetic field, called the source field effect. Milonni writes: "The basic idea here will be that the Casimir force may be derived from the source fields alone even in completely conventional QED, ..." Milonni provides detailed argument that the measurable physical effects usually attributed to the vacuum electromagnetic field cannot be explained by that field alone, but require in addition a contribution from the self-energy of the electrons, or their radiation reaction. He writes: "The radiation reaction and the vacuum fields are two aspects of the same thing when it comes to physical interpretations of various QED processes including the Lamb shift, van der Waals forces, and Casimir effects." This point of view is also stated by Jaffe (2005): "The Casimir force can be calculated without reference to vacuum fluctuations, and like all other observable effects in QED, it vanishes as the fine structure constant, α, goes to zero."