Vacuum energy and Casimir Effect
I have to bring people's attention to this paper which just shows up and which meantions your name:
The Jaffe paper
and comments here.
I totally agree with Jaffe, plus some of my own opinions:
1.There is a total lack of experimental evidence for vacuum energy, other than the theoreticalCasimir Effect.
2.There is a total lack of experimental evidence for Casimir Effect, except for the Lamoreaux experiment, and maybe a few variety. The Lamoreaux experiment was admittedly conducted using lab scratch materials no more than $300, and not re-produced by any one.
3.The theoretical Casimir force, being an attractive force inverse proportional to the 4th power of the gap, is EXTREMELY distance sensitive, and could NOT have been measured using a Lamoreaux torque balance method. Since a stable equilibrium of force can not be acquired. (Force from a torque is only proportional to the 1st power of displacement).
4.Whatever microscopic forces Lamoreaux or others have measured. If it is measured correctly it is merely Van de Waals force between surfaces of metal plates.
I might also dare to say that my background allows me to know a bit more about experiments on surfaces of condensed matters, than theoretists who study particles at high energies.
Quantoken
posted by Quantoken at 8:35 PM
2 Comments:
You really need to read more about the Lamoreaux experiments, and many AFM experiments verifying the results.
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/hep-ph/pdf/0009/0009062.pdf
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/hep-ph/pdf/0210/0210004.pdf
References therein.
12:29 PM
I just now saw these comments, and even though they are rather dated, thought that I'd comment.
I find it interesting that the cost of an experiment gives it credibility. With this criterion, I'd think the more expensive, the less credible, as there is more to lose when something goes wrong. In fact saying that my experiment cost $300 is partly a joke--of course all the junk was left over from other work that had been well supported.
It is not exactly correct to say that the Casimir force is the same as the van der Waals force. I'd recommend Casimir's papers on this topic.
I agree that the Casimir force does not imply the existence of zero point energy. There are multiple ways to look at this problem.
Sincerely
Steve Lamoreaux
4:31 PM
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