Aims Ambient air pollution is a major health risk, leading to respiratory and cardiovascular mortality. A recent Global Exposure Mortality Model, based on an unmatched number of cohort studies in many countries, provides new hazard ratio functions, calling for re-evaluation of the disease burden. Accordingly, we estimated excess cardiovascular mortality attributed to air pollution in Europe. Methods and results The new hazard ratio functions have been combined with ambient air pollution exposure data to estimate the impacts in Europe and the 28 countries of the European Union (EU-28). The annual excess mortality rate from ambient air pollution in Europe is 790 000 [95% confidence interval (95% CI) 645 000–934 000], and 659 000 (95% CI 537 000–775 000) in the EU-28. Between 40% and 80% are due to cardiovascular events, which dominate health outcomes. The upper limit includes events attributed to other non-communicable diseases, which are currently not specified. These estimates exceed recent analyses, such as the Global Burden of Disease for 2015, by more than a factor of two. We estimate that air pollution reduces the mean life expectancy in Europe by about 2.2 years with an annual, attributable per capita mortality rate in Europe of 133/100 000 per year. Conclusion We provide new data based on novel hazard ratio functions suggesting that the health impacts attributable to ambient air pollution in Europe are substantially higher than previously assumed, though subject to considerable uncertainty. Our results imply that replacing fossil fuels by clean, renewable energy sources could substantially reduce the loss of life expectancy from air pollution.

Anthropogenic greenhouse gases and aerosols are associated with climate change and human health risks. We used a global model to estimate the climate and public health outcomes attributable to fossil fuel use, indicating the potential benefits of a phaseout. We show that it can avoid an excess mortality rate of 3.61 (2.96–4.21) million per year from outdoor air pollution worldwide. This could be up to 5.55 (4.52–6.52) million per year by additionally controlling nonfossil anthropogenic sources. Globally, fossil-fuel-related emissions account for about 65% of the excess mortality, and 70% of the climate cooling by anthropogenic aerosols. The chemical influence of air pollution on aeolian dust contributes to the aerosol cooling. Because aerosols affect the hydrologic cycle, removing the anthropogenic emissions in the model increases rainfall by 10–70% over densely populated regions in India and 10–30% over northern China, and by 10–40% over Central America, West Africa, and the drought-prone Sahel, thus contributing to water and food security. Since aerosols mask the anthropogenic rise in global temperature, removing fossil-fuel-generated particles liberates 0.51(±0.03) °C and all pollution particles 0.73(±0.03) °C warming, reaching around 2 °C over North America and Northeast Asia. The steep temperature increase from removing aerosols can be moderated to about 0.36(±0.06) °C globally by the simultaneous reduction of tropospheric ozone and methane. We conclude that a rapid phaseout of fossil-fuel-related emissions and major reductions of other anthropogenic sources are needed to save millions of lives, restore aerosol-perturbed rainfall patterns, and limit global warming to 2 °C.

We compute Casimir forces in open geometries with edges, involving parallel as well as perpendicular semi-infinite plates. We focus on Casimir configurations which are governed by a unique dimensional scaling law with a universal coefficient. With the aid of worldline numerics, we determine this coefficient for various geometries for the case of scalar-field fluctuations with Dirichlet boundary conditions. Our results facilitate an estimate of the systematic error induced by the edges of finite plates, for instance, in a standard parallel-plate experiment. The Casimir edge effects for this case can be reformulated as an increase of the effective area of the configuration.

We employ the recently developed worldline numerics, which combines string-inspired field theory methods with Monte Carlo techniques, to develop an algorithm for the computation of pair-production rates in scalar QED for inhomogeneous background fields. We test the algorithm with the classic Sauter potential, for which we compute the local production rate for the first time. Furthermore, we study the production rate for a superposition of a constant E field and a spatially oscillating field for various oscillation frequencies. Our results reveal that the approximation by a local derivative expansion already fails for frequencies small compared to the electron mass scale, whereas for strongly oscillating fields a derivative expansion for the averaged field represents an acceptable approximation. The worldline picture makes the nonlocal nature of pair production transparent and facilitates a profound understanding of this important quantum phenomenon.

We compute Casimir interaction energies for the sphere-plate and cylinder-plate configuration induced by scalar-field fluctuations with Dirichlet boundary conditions. Based on a high-precision calculation using worldline numerics, we quantitatively determine the validity bounds of the proximity force approximation (PFA) on which the comparison between all corresponding experiments and theory are based. We observe the quantitative failure of the PFA on the 1% level for a curvature parameter a/R > 0.00755. Even qualitatively, the PFA fails to predict reliably the correct sign of genuine Casimir curvature effects. We conclude that data analysis of future experiments aiming at a precision of 0.1% must no longer be based on the PFA.PACS numbers: 42.50. Lc,03.70.+k, Measurements of the Casimir force [1] have reached a precision level of 1% [2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. Further improvements are currently aimed at with intense efforts, owing to the increasing relevance of these quantum forces for nano-and micro-scale mechanical systems; also, Casimir precision measurements play a major role in the search for new sub-millimeter forces, resulting in important constraints for new physics [9,10,11,12,13].On this level of precision, corrections owing to material properties, thermal fluctuations and geometry dependencies have to be accounted for [14,15,16,17]. In order to reduce material corrections such as surface roughness and finite conductivity which are difficult to control with high precision, force measurements at larger surface separations up to the micron range are intended. Though this implies stronger geometry dependence, this latter effect is, in principle, under clean theoretical control, since it follows directly from quantum field theory [18].Straightforward computations of geometry dependencies are conceptually complicated, since the relevant information is subtly encoded in the fluctuation spectrum. Analytic solutions can usually be found only for highly symmetric geometries. This problem is particularly prominent, since current and future precision measurements predominantly rely on configurations involving curved surfaces, such as a sphere above a plate. As a general recipe, the proximity force approximation (PFA) [19] has been the standard tool for estimating curvature effects for non-planar geometries in all experiments so far. The fact that the PFA is uncontrolled with unknown validity limits makes this approach highly problematic.Therefore, a technique is needed that facilitates Casimir computations from field-theoretic first principles. For this purpose, worldline numerics has been developed [20], combining the string-inspired approach to quantum field theory [21] with Monte Carlo methods. As a main advantage, the worldline algorithm can be formulated for arbitrary geometries, resulting in a numerical estimate of the exact answer [22]. For the sphere-plate and cylinder-plate configurations, also new analytic methods are currently developed and latest results including exact solutions are given in [23,24]. In either...