Historical research guide · 0661 · 2001
Stochastic nonrelativistic approach to gravity as originating from vacuum zero-point field van der Waals forces
Daniel C. Cole · Alfonso Rueda · Konn Danley
In one minute
One of the boldest ideas in this whole subject is that gravity is not a fundamental force at all but a leftover — the same kind of residue that makes two neutral atoms attract, the van der Waals force, except summed over every particle and driven by the zero-point field of the vacuum. Daniel Cole, Alfonso Rueda and Konn Danley take that proposal seriously enough to test it properly. Rueda is one of the authors of the zero-point-field theory of inertia, so this is the programme auditing its own foundations rather than an outsider taking a shot. They start from the Casimir-Polder integral, the standard expression for the vacuum-induced force between two polarisable particles, and show it can be evaluated directly, without the approximations earlier treatments had leaned on. Done that way, this particular route does not deliver Newtonian gravity. The authors then name exactly what would have to change: different or additional physical constraints, or dynamics handled outside the slow-moving framework the Casimir-Polder integral assumes.
Connection
Chapter 3 holds that gravity is induced by the vacuum rather than fundamental, and this paper is the reason that chapter points at the relativistic, polarizable-vacuum line of attack rather than at a simple sum of van der Waals forces: the honest calculation closes one door and labels the others. Chapter 2 gains a precise piece of vacuum bookkeeping — what the Casimir-Polder integral does and does not contain. Read it beside the inertia paper at /library/stm-532ddcda6d and the stochastic electrodynamics survey at /library/stm-1011f1af4f.
From the source
The proposal under analysis is that gravity may originate as a van der Waals type of residual force between particles, produced by the electromagnetic zero-point field of the vacuum — that is, gravity as an induced effect of the vacuum rather than a fundamental interaction.Abstract, opening sentence
Starting from the Casimir-Polder integral, the standard expression for the vacuum-induced force between two polarisable particles, the authors show that the proposed approach can be analysed directly, without recourse to the approximations previously made in this line of work.Abstract; statement of method
Carried through in that direct form, the approach does not reproduce Newtonian gravity — at least not with this particular starting point.Abstract; conclusion
The authors name the two ways out and leave them open: imposing different or additional physical constraints, or treating the underlying dynamics differently from what is embodied in the Casimir-Polder integral.Abstract, closing sentence
The verdict is bounded by its own method, and the authors say so: the Casimir-Polder integral is inherently subrelativistic, and the whole treatment here is stochastic and nonrelativistic — the vacuum field handled as a real random classical field acting on particles — so a relativistic derivation of induced gravity is not what has been tested.Title; abstract, closing sentence
The way in
https://doi.org/10.1103/physreva.63.054101How to cite it
Daniel C. Cole, Alfonso Rueda, Konn Danley (2001) Stochastic nonrelativistic approach to gravity as originating from vacuum zero-point field van der Waals forces doi:10.1103/physreva.63.054101