Search results for "vacuum"
showing 10 items of 352 documents
Benzoxetes and Benzothietes ¾ Heterocyclic Analogues of Benzocyclobutene
2012
Benzo-condensed four-ring heterocycles, such as benzoxetes 1 and benzothietes 3 represent multi-purpose starting compounds for the preparation of various higher heterocyclic ring systems. The thermal or photochemical valence isomerizations between the benzenoid forms 1,3 and the higher reactive o-quinoid structures 2,4 provide the basis for the synthetic applications. On the other hand, this valence isomerization impedes in particular the generation and storage of 1 because the thermal equilibrium 1 ⇆ 2 is completely on the side of 2. Thus, the number of erroneous or questionable benzoxete structures published to date is surprisingly high. On the contrary, the thermal equilibrium 3 ⇆ 4 is o…
Switching Capacitors Transformerless Bidirectional DC-DC Converter
2020
This paper presents an innovative converter topology that better connects the needs of the battery pack and the electric motor towards the validation of an eco-sustainable electric mobility model. More in particular, the components of the proposed converter change their connection state during both the charging and discharging time of the battery, leading to a higher performance with respect to traditional step-down or step-up converters. The simulations carried out by means of the PLECS® environment have demonstrated the early feasibility of the proposed system.
Electromagnetic field fluctuations near a dielectric-vacuum boundary and surface divergences in the ideal conductor limit
2012
We consider the electric and magnetic field fluctuations in the vacuum state in the region external to a half-space filled with a homogeneous non-dissipative dielectric. We discuss an appropriate limit to an ideal metal and concentrate our interest on the renormalized field fluctuations, or equivalently to renormalized electric and magnetic energy densities, in the proximity of the dielectric-vacuum interface. We show that surface divergences of field fluctuations arise at the interface in an appropriate ideal conductor limit, and that our limiting procedure allows to discuss in detail their structure. Field fluctuations close to the surface can be investigated through the retarded Casimir-…
Dispersion Interactions between Neutral Atoms and the Quantum Electrodynamical Vacuum
2018
Dispersion interactions are long-range interactions between neutral ground-state atoms or molecules, or polarizable bodies in general, due to their common interaction with the quantum electromagnetic field. They arise from the exchange of virtual photons between the atoms, and, in the case of three or more atoms, are not additive. In this review, after having introduced the relevant coupling schemes and effective Hamiltonians, as well as properties of the vacuum fluctuations, we~outline the main properties of dispersion interactions, both in the nonretarded (van der Waals) and retarded (Casimir--Polder) regime. We then discuss their deep relation with the existence of the vacuum fluctuation…
Van der Waals and resonance interactions between accelerated atoms in vacuum and the Unruh effect
2017
We discuss different physical effects related to the uniform acceleration of atoms in vacuum, in the framework of quantum electrodynamics. We first investigate the van der Waals/Casimir-Polder dispersion and resonance interactions between two uniformly accelerated atoms in vacuum. We show that the atomic acceleration significantly affects the van der Waals force, yielding a different scaling of the interaction with the interatomic distance and an explicit time dependence of the interaction energy. We argue how these results could allow for an indirect detection of the Unruh effect through dispersion interactions between atoms. We then consider the resonance interaction between two accelerat…
On the exhaust of electromagnetic drive
2016
Recent reports about propulsion without reaction mass have been met on one hand with enthusiasm and on the other hand with some doubts. Namely, closed metal cavities, when fueled with microwaves, have delivered thrust that could eventually maintain satellites on orbits using solar power. However, the measured thrust appears to be without any apparent exhaust. Thus the Law of Action-Reaction seems to have been violated. We consider the possibility that the exhaust is in a form that has so far escaped both experimental detection and theoretical attention. In the thruster's cavity microwaves interfere with each other and invariably some photons will also end up co-propagating with opposite pha…
Spontaneous emission of an atom near an oscillating mirror
2019
We investigate the spontaneous emission of one atom placed near an oscillating reflecting plate. We consider the atom modeled as a two-level system, interacting with the quantum electromagnetic field in the vacuum state, in the presence of the oscillating mirror. We suppose that the plate oscillates adiabatically, so that the time-dependence of the interaction Hamiltonian is entirely enclosed in the time-dependent mode functions, satisfying the boundary conditions at the plate surface, at any given time. Using time-dependent perturbation theory, we evaluate the transition rate to the ground-state of the atom, and show that it depends on the time-dependent atom-plate distance. We also show t…
Vacuum Casimir energy densities and field divergences at boundaries
2014
We consider and review the emergence of singular energy densities and field fluctuations at sharp boundaries or point-like field sources in the vacuum. The presence of singular energy densities of a field may be relevant from a conceptual point of view, because they contribute to the self-energy of the system. They should also generate significant gravitational effects. We first consider the case of the interface between a metallic boundary and the vacuum, and obtain the structure of the singular electric and magnetic energy densities at the interface through an appropriate limit from a dielectric to an ideal conductor. Then, we consider the case of a point-like source of the electromagneti…
Energy level shifts of a uniformly accelerated atom in the presence of boundary conditions
2009
We discuss the radiative level shifts of an atom moving with uniform acceleration near an infinite reflecting plate. We first consider the case of a two-level system interacting with a massless scalar field in the vacuum state. The acceleration of the two-level atom is supposed in a direction parallel to the conducting plate. We evaluate the contribution of vacuum fluctuations and of the radiation reaction field to the energy shift of the atomic levels, and discuss their behaviour as a function of the atomic acceleration and of the atom-plate distance. Then, we investigate the more general case of an hydrogen atom accelerating near a perfectly reflecting plate and interacting with the elect…
Vacuum induced berry phase: Theory and experimental proposal
2003
We investigate quantum effects in geometric phases arising when a two-level system is interacting with a quantized electromagnetic field. When the system is adiabatically driven along a closed loop in the parameter space, signatures of the field quantization are observable in the geometric phase. We propose a feasible experiment to measure these effects in cavity QED and also analyse the semi-classical limit, recovering the usual Berry phase results.