Dynamical Casimir photon creation by a moving massive mirror · revision history

Revision 2

Accepted · core change · record

Changes against revision 1:

Title
Dynamical Casimir photon creation by a moving massive mirror
Plain
A mirror shaken fast enough should turn vacuum fluctuations into real photon pairs, the dynamical Casimir effect. It has been seen with electrical circuits that act like a moving mirror, but never with a real massive object.
Precise · changed · core
Revision 1: A mechanical mirror or membrane forming one wall of an electromagnetic cavity, oscillating at frequency $\Omega$ with amplitude $a$; photon pairs are created at the cavity mode $\omega = \Omega/2$ at a rate set by $(a \Omega / c)^{2}$ and the cavity quality factor. Mechanical resonators reach Omega/2pi of order $1\mathrm{e}9 \text{ to } 1\mathrm{e}10\,\mathrm{s}^{-1}$ only with tiny amplitudes. An answer is detection of photon pairs from a mechanically moving body with rate and two-mode squeezing matching theory, separated from thermal and parametric backgrounds.
Revision 2: A mechanical mirror or membrane forming one wall of an electromagnetic cavity, oscillating at frequency $\Omega$ with amplitude $a$; photon pairs are created at the cavity mode $\omega = \Omega/2$ at a rate set by $(a \Omega / c)^{2}$ and the cavity quality factor. Mechanical resonators reach $\Omega/2\pi$ of order $10^{9} \text{ to } 10^{10}\,\mathrm{s}^{-1}$ only with tiny amplitudes. An answer is detection of photon pairs from a mechanically moving body with rate and two-mode squeezing matching theory, separated from thermal and parametric backgrounds.
Settled by
A cryogenic measurement of photon pair emission from a GHz mechanical resonator coupled to a high-Q cavity, with correlations distinguishing it from thermal emission.
Kind
well-posed
Answer type
yes-no
References
(empty)
Literature status
open
Status note
The effect was observed with a SQUID-modulated superconducting transmission line acting as an effective mirror (Wilson et al., Nature 2011); no massive-mirror observation is known.
Posed since
(empty)

Decisions