Defense Intelligence Reference Document Concepts For Extracting Energy From The Quantum Vacuum

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interchangeability of source-field effects and vacuum-fluctuation effects ... shows that
source-field effects are the same as if vacuum fluctuations were present." Applied to
the case of a radiating atom, Jaynes provides a specific example of his conclusion with
the statement "The radiating atom is indeed interacting with an electromagnetic field of
the intensity predicted by the zero-point energy, but this is just the atom's own
radiation reaction field (Reference 67)." As a result, with the axiomatic second-
quantized field formalism set aside, in the neoclassical approach any consideration of
the conversion of vacuum ZPE for use must be displaced to consideration of the
conversion and degradability of source or matter-fields fluctuation energy for use,
issues yet to be addressed in the literature.
SED Model Revisited
SED is a classical (that is, non-quantized) theory of particle-field interactions that
assumes the existence of classical particles and a classical random background
electromagnetic field distribution whose Lorentz-invariant spectral energy density is
chosen to match that originally appearing in second-quantized QED. Given SED's
heuristic value of classical-like modeling and ease of calculation and its seeming ability
to address many quantum mechanical problems with success (as outlined in Section
III), the SED approach has been employed in the literature to explore vacuum energy
conversion. In the absence of a formalism for vacuum field quantization, there are no
fundamental immutability constraints that would mitigate against vacuum energy
degradability, so that issue is not testable under this formalism.
Investigations to date have included the use of cavity-QED techniques to suppress
atomic or molecular ground states (Reference 28), and evaluation of the use of a
nonlinear oscillator to continuously downshift high-frequency components of the
vacuum fluctuation spectrum to lower frequencies for convenient collection and use.
With regard to the latter, the result of a nonrelativistic SED analysis is that the
downshifting process acts to convert an initial hypothetical cubic-frequency vacuum
fluctuation spectrum towards a Rayleigh-Jeans rather than a Planck heat spectrum (the
former being a low energy approximation of the latter) (Reference 68, 69). Extension of
the analysis to the relativistic regime does not alter this conclusion (Reference 70, 71).
Though further work remains, these considerations lead one to conclude that SED in its
present form is incomplete, and may not be useful for the assessment of the potential
conversion of vacuum energy to other forms; its predictions concerning such must be
treated with caution.
Additional shortcomings of the SED model include convoluted attempts to derive
interference effects or Schrbdinger's equation, and the difficulty in explaining sharply-
defined stationary states (that is, sharp atomic spectra), though there have been many
attempts (Reference 17). QED and SED do not in general yield the same results for
nonlinear systems, although they are in agreement for the range of linear systems
examined. The apparent disagreements between SED and QED are quite serious, and
occur in areas in which QED is highly successful. Perhaps the source of these difficulties
lies in accurately dealing with the nonlinear stochastic differential equations in SED for
these problems. Even still, it is likely that differences will remain, which should clearly
be testable by experimental means (Reference 72). For a very thorough, detailed and
scholarly review of SED, see (Reference 17) and the corresponding review by Cole and
Rueda (Reference 73).
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