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

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This Defense Intelligence Reference Document from the Defense Intelligence Agency, dated 6 April 2010, is one in a series of FY 2009 advanced technology reports produced under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications (AAWSA) program. It reviews the physics of zero-point field energy in the quantum vacuum and proposed schemes for extracting it, including the Casimir effect, Forward's vacuum-fluctuation battery, and resonant dielectric spheres. It notes that no practicable extraction technique has been demonstrated in the laboratory.

  • p. 5 …electromagnetic vacuum, because photons serve as the massless eigenstates of (unified) electroweak theory with an "effective…
  • p. 7 …Illustration of the Casimir Effect 1.kt:trnstalic Rcrulsi1111 Figure 2. Vacuum-Fluctuation Battery (Reference 9…
  • p. 22 …Tunable Casimir Effect: Engine Cycle Another "tunable" conductive-type plate experiment under consideration involves the use…
  • p. 23 …This narrower wavelength span excludes the rest of the electromagnetic ZPF modes having wavelengths shorter than…
  • p. 28 …The emerging laboratory evidence led investigators to consider the hypothesis that the Casimir effect may be…
  • p. 30 …Casimir Effect in the Plenum Picture One begins with the free quantum vacuum electromagnetic field fluctuations…
  • p. 33 UNCLASSIFIED//FIHl 8FFHil.t.k Wfili IH.k\f interchangeability of source-field effects and vacuum…
  • p. 35 …Their quantum optics analysis showed that there is a distortion of the vacuum electromagnetic ZPF due…
  • p. 36 …electromagnetic) stresses induced by the presence of the infinite plane conductor produces a Casimir effect. This…
  • p. 37 …Analogs of the Casimir effect also exist for fields other than the electromagnetic field. When considering…
  • p. 38 …9PPll!ltllt '11815 1n•tY Brane or "brane world") analogs of the Casimir effect yet to…
  • p. 40 …He modeled his decay mechanism a~er the (vacuum electromagnetic) Casimir effect wherein the vacuum state…
  • p. 41 …and a is the electromagnetic fine structure constant. In principle, this effect can occur for any…
  • p. 43 …The (electromagnetic) Casimir effect is an example in which certain ZPF modes are excluded by physical…
  • p. 45 …Electromagnetic Casimir effects are typically small and difficult to measure. In fact, measurements have only been…
  • p. 47 …effect. • There are numerous potential ways in which the ground state of the vacuum electromagnetic field…
  • p. 48 …The QCD Bag Model When considering the effective masses of quarks bound within hadrons, it is…
  • p. 50 …S., "The Casimir Effect in Field Theory," Physics in the Making, Essays on Developments in 20…
  • p. 54 …A., The Casimir Effect: Physical Manifestations of Zero-Point Energy, World Scientific, Singapore, 2001, p. 13…
UNCLASSIFIED; ;retl 8ffllil.t.k WE'lii '"" Y
Given the heuristic value of certain aspects of SED modeling, but with the shortcomings
outlined above noted, SED theorists de la Pena and Cetto have proposed a modification
to SED they call LSED (linear SED) (Reference 74). The modification consists of the
addition of three new constraining principles that result in a form of convergence with
non relativistic quantum mechanics while retaining some of the appealing attributes of
standard SED (for example, quantum states being stable on the basis of a dynamic
balance between absorption and emission of background vacuum fluctuation fields).
The added constraints (for example, an added constraint that invokes detailed energy
balance for separate frequencies) result in correcting several known problems with
standard SED. For example, now the equilibrium spectrum is Planck's, not Rayleigh-
Jeans, and wavelike behavior of matter and nonlocality issues can be addressed, and so
forth. The issue of continuous vacuum energy conversion has yet to be addressed in
this new formalism, however, so that remains for the future.
QED Without Second-Quantized Fields
As yet another alternative to canonical second-quantized QED, Barut (Reference 75)
has proposed that effects attributable to vacuum ZPF can be derived with a theory in
which there are source (matter) fluctuation fields but no vacuum fluctuation fields, and
that even the former can be eliminated. Barut's approach is developed in considerable
detail as an independent, self-consistent, formulation of QED in its own right. Barut
argues that effects normally attributed to vacuum fluctuations in the second-quantized,
linear theory of the radiation field can be equally well computed within the framework
of a non-second-quantized, nonlinear theory which is based entirely on matter wave
functions alone. His program is to assess how far one can go in understanding radiative
processes without second quantization or vacua that fluctuate. Barut and his
collaborators have successfully applied the theory to the Lamb shift and spontaneous
emission (Reference 76, 77), problems of cavity QED (Reference 78), Casimir-Paider
and van der Waals forces (Reference 79), calculations of the electron's ge-2 factor
(Reference 80-82), 12 and the Davies-Unruh effect (Reference 83) among others.
Given that the formalism of second-quantized field operators are not used at all in the
Barut approach, the seemingly quantized properties of fields are taken to simply reflect
first quantization of the sources. Therefore, in the absence of the independent existence
of second-quantized field fluctuations, the QED arguments concerning immutability and
nondegradability of quantized vacuum fluctuation fields, and the corollary proscription
against potential conversion of energy from such fields, do not apply. As in the
neoclassical approach, the question of the conversion of quantum ZPE to other forms
must be diverted to consideration of the global properties of matter fluctuation
interactions in the as-yet-incomplete development of the Barut approach.
EXAMPLES OF DEGRADABLE OF DECAYING VACUUM
In closing, several examples of a degradable vacuum that are predicted by quantum
field theory, quantum field theory in curved spacetime, and the Standard Model of
elementary particle physics will be reviewed. It turns out that the vacuum in QED
theory is in fact degradable in spite of its "hardwired" ZPF modes.
12 ge is the electron's gyromagnetic ratio.
28
UNCLASSIFIED/ /F8Pl 9PPICIAL USE ONLY

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Report, from the dia collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 57 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.