The Casimir Effect and the Quantum Vacuum

Note the paper discusses some proposals of positive-energy warp drives. The well-known Alcubierre drive[1] requires negative energy density. So while it dodges the critique of this paper, negative energy is highly likely to be unphysical. And no, what Michio Kaku fantasized on that Discovery show won't work as the Casimir effect isn't due to vacuum energy[2][3] and thus you can't get negative energy that way. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive [2]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.04143 [3]: https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0503158

My posts had no deeper meaning. I personally don’t feel elegant mathematics really implies anything about the physical universe, but that doesn’t imply anything beyond the need for experimental evidence. > What model do you prefer for vacuum energy? The standard model seems fine without vacuum energy > 0. ex: https://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-th/0503158.pdf Are you aware of any experiment that suggests it, beyond the apparent acceleration of the expansion of the universe? Because IMO an explanation that only shows up after an observation and also only applies to a single observation isn’t a deeper explanation than the observation itself. (Edited for clarity.)

There are different explanations, but the original one (zero-point energy) is very heuristic, involving operations with infinity. There are more physical explanations in terms of physical EM interactions (van der Waals forces), see https://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-th/0503158.pdf

I was under the impression the paper by Jaffe[1] showed the negative energy explanation[2] was not physical, but totally not my field. [1]: https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0503158v1 [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect#Relativistic_va...

AFAIK the Casimir force is due to the van der Waals force between the plates, so doesn't that spoil the negative energy party from the get-go? https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.04143 https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0503158