Vacuum radiation pressure fluctuations on atoms

Space and time averaged quantum stress tensor fluctuations

“…Phenomena associated with a full theory of quantum gravity may be explored through extensions to the semiclassical theory of gravity. Many such phenomena have been proposed over the years, including geodesic focusing [9,21,22], impacts on power spectra [10,11], increased barrier penetration rates of charged particles [23], alternative false vacuum decay pathways for self-coupled scalar fields [24], velocity fluctuations of Rydberg atoms [26], and large variations in scattered photons in low-temperature light scattering experiments [27].…”

“…IID in Ref. [26], where the dependence of both f (ω) and P (x) upon the ratio t 0 /τ was considered. However, no numerical studies using these more general functions have yet been performed.…”

“…A different physical application of the characteristic frequencies involves the effects of vacuum radiation pressure fluctuations on Rydberg atoms [26]. These fluctuations involve an operator with p = 7, as shown in Ref.…”

“…The model proposed in Ref. [26] involves the excitation of an atom to a highly excited Rydberg state by a laser pulse, and its subsequent de-excitation by a second pulse. The combined effect can be viewed as a measurement of the p = 7 operator with a two-time-scale temporal sampling function, resulting in velocity fluctuations of the atom.…”

“…These findings suggest the probabilities of measuring large vacuum fluctuations of stress tensor operators may not be as negligible as one might have expected, spurring work into possible physical effects such as focusing of geodesics induced by spacetime curvature fluctuations [21,22] and enhanced barrier penetration rates of charge particles due to radiation pressure fluctuations [23]. Related phenomena in other systems that emerge from similar quadratic operators are also expected to occur: false vacuum decay of a self-interacting scalar field may be dominated by a pathway [24] different from the usual instanton approximation [25], Rydberg atoms may exhibit velocity fluctuations in response to a sequence of short laser pulses [26], and low-temperature light scattering experiments may find large variations in the number of scattered photons [27].…”