Historical research guide · 0402 · 2001
Electrodynamics in the zero-point field: on the equilibrium spectral energy distribution and the origin of inertial mass
Michael Ibison
In one minute
Stochastic electrodynamics takes the zero-point field seriously as a real classical field and asks how much of quantum behaviour follows from it. One of its boldest proposals is that inertia — the resistance every mass offers to being accelerated — is the vacuum pushing back. Michael Ibison, writing from Puthoff’s own Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin, sets out two qualifications any version of that proposal has to meet. The first is arithmetic in the equation of motion: let the bare mass go to zero and the field’s force on the particle goes to zero with it, so a genuinely massless point charge has nowhere to put the energy and cannot acquire mass from any electromagnetic field, the zero-point field included. A scheme in which the field boosts a small existing mass to the observed value survives, and Ibison asks it to say how it differs from ordinary mass renormalisation. The second concerns equilibrium: because the field looks statistically the same in every frame, matter in balance with it would have to as well.
Connection
Chapter 3 rests on inertia being an effect of the vacuum rather than a primitive property of matter, and this is the paper that says precisely what such a model must supply: a seed mass, or a real internal degree of freedom, before the field has anything to act on. That is a specification, written from inside the programme, not an objection to it. Chapter 2 gets the other half — the argument that a classical zero-point field cannot be in mutual equilibrium with real charged matter, which is the sharpest open question in classical vacuum modelling. Read it beside the inertia papers it addresses at /library/stm-0f2b09effd and /library/stm-532ddcda6d, and beside Boyer’s account of what stochastic electrodynamics does deliver at /library/stm-1011f1af4f and /library/stm-3705aa8569.
From the source
A structureless classical point charge that starts out massless cannot acquire inertial mass from any electromagnetic field, the zero-point field included. Letting the bare mass tend to zero in the relativistic Braffort-Marshall equation forces the field’s four-force on the particle to tend to zero as well, so the electric field does no work along the motion; with no internal degrees of freedom there is nowhere for the charge to put the energy.Sect. 1.2, the paragraph following Eq. 1, citing the author’s companion note physics/0106046
The equation of motion the programme uses is not an ad hoc extension of classical electrodynamics. With the field tensor read as the zero-point field operator, the Braffort-Marshall equation is the relativistic generalisation of the Heisenberg equation of motion for the position operator of a free charged particle with the vacuum state of the quantised electromagnetic field properly included; as Milonni puts it, once coupling to the field is switched on and radiation reaction admitted, the action of the vacuum field is a necessary component of the fluctuation-dissipation relation between atom and field, not an optional extra.Sect. 1.2, the paragraph introducing Eq. 1, citing Milonni
Rueda and Haisch’s derivation of inertia from scattering of the zero-point field is consistent with that qualification rather than contradicted by it: their charged particles are not entirely free of structure, because the mass-specific frequency-dependent coupling constant they use between particle and field already implies an internal structure.Sect. 1.2, closing paragraph, on references 15 to 17
In the parton model of Haisch, Rueda and Puthoff the particle carries an internal oscillatory degree of freedom that the field energises, and such a particle can take up energy. Ibison’s condition is that the assembled components must already carry inertia, otherwise the slightest electromagnetic influence would tear the dipole apart; so the field could boost an already present, tiny, localised mass-energy to the observed value, and a programme of that shape should distinguish itself from the existing technique of mass renormalisation.Sect. 1.4, on Haisch, Rueda and Puthoff, Phys. Rev. A 49, 678
The equilibrium argument: the statistics of the zero-point field are the same in every inertial frame, so a distribution of matter in equilibrium with it would have to be Lorentz-invariant too, for every boost. The matter we observe is not distributed that way — the cosmic microwave background picks out a local rest frame — so classical matter and a classically conceived zero-point field are not in mutual equilibrium. Boyer’s own nonlinear-oscillator calculation reaches the same conclusion and was confirmed by Pesquera and Claverie and by Blanco, Pesquera and Santos, though all of those analyses are non-relativistic.Sects. 2.1 and 2.2
One loophole is named and left open. A statistically static distribution of dipoles with a perfectly linear response does not alter the frequency spectrum of the radiation, so any spectrum can come to equilibrium with such dipoles — the route Puthoff took with massive charges as sources of the zero-point field and Cole with massive non-relativistic dipoles. Ibison’s reservation is practical: real charges carry some non-linearity, so the arrangement is unstable.Sect. 2.3, citing Puthoff, Phys. Rev. A 40, 4857, and Cole
The way in
https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0106080How to cite it
Michael Ibison (2001) Electrodynamics in the zero-point field: on the equilibrium spectral energy distribution and the origin of inertial mass arXiv:physics/0106080