I hope I do not misrepresent Klauber when he argues that the situation in standard QFT, with free fields, isn't really analogous to bound state systems. In the former case, the ground state can have zero energy. The half quanta are suspect and do not contribute to energy which can drive pair...
Ah... I'm a novice and not in a position to do that---just learned a bit of QFT during Christmas. I was so amazed when I saw that QFT does *not* predict vacuum fluctuations. Yet everybody are talking about them. I hope this thread can give a good reason for that.
I've looked at these papers now and don't understand your objections.
Mohideen and Roy show excellent quantitative agreement with the standard Casimir formula F = -(Pi^2 hbar c/240)(A/d^4) (given corrections due to their experimental setup such as spherical shape of one of the plates and...
Well, it seems like this effect can be explained by a relativistic, retarded van der Waals force between the plates (http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0503158).
It's a bit unsatisfactory to have two explanations for this effect, so how do they compare?
First note that the zero point energy (ZPE)...
In chapter 10 of Robert D. Klauber's excellent QFT book, there's a nice overview of different concepts occurring in the context of vacuum fluctuations. Inspired by that chapter I ask:
If one would state that there is no such thing as vacuum fluctuations, what counter arguments are there?
In...