1. ### A Contribution of vacuum fluctuation to the self-energy of the electron

In the book" The Quantum Theory of Radiation", Heitler derived the transverse self-energy of the electron(Chapter III, Section18, Eq.(23)) $$\frac{{{e^2}}}{{\pi m}}\int_{\text{0}}^\infty {kdk}$$ which is the energy of the electron under the action of the vacuum fluctuation of the radiation...
2. ### A How, and in what atoms does the Lamb shift occur?

The Uehling potential due to vacuum polarization by virtual electron-positron pairs is said to be the dominant contribution — 205.0073 meV — to the Lamb shift between the 2P1/22P1/2 and 2S1/22S1/2 states of muonic hydrogen. In the Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamb_shift), it is...
3. ### I Relation between quantum fluctuations and vacuum energy?

As far as I understand it, the non-zero vacuum energy attributed to a quantum field (at each point in space-time) is precisely due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle (and the fact that the energy of the quantum field at each space-time point is quantised). Accordingly (in order to satisfy...
4. ### The big bang was a fluctuation of what?

I have read that the total energy of the universe is zero and that the big bang might have emerged from a quantum fluctuation. Also that there is a chance (extremely low) of another big bang occurring in the quantum vacuum energy fluctuations. As far as I understand the vacuum energy / dark...
5. ### Self Energy of the Higgs

I have been going through chapter 2 of Sakurai; the 1967 edition. Chapter 2 gets into the self energy of the electron, the concept of the bare mass of the electron, and vacuum fluctuations. Would these same concepts (self energy, bare mass, and vacuum fluctuations) apply to a scalar field (e g...
6. ### Vacuum fluctions and the Casimir Effect

I don't recall where I saw this....but the author said that the Casimir effect experimentally proved that vacuum fluctuations exist. Does the Casimir effect really prove that or is it consistent with vacuum fluctuations? Thanks for any comments you care to make.