A Particle Theory of the Casimir Effect.pdf

A PARTICLE THEORY OF THE CASIMIR 5 EFFECT 9 9 1 ∗ † Patrick Suppes, Adonai S. Sant’Anna t c Ventura Hall, Stanford University O Stanford, California 94305-4115, USA 0 J. Acacio de Barros‡ 1 Departamento de F´ısica, UFJF 1 36036-330, Juiz de Fora, MG, Brazil. v 0 1 0 0 In previous works Suppes and de Barros used a pure particle model to 1 derive interference effects, where individual photons have well-defined tra- 5 jectories, and hence no wave properties. In the present paper we extend 9 / that description to account for the Casimir effect. We consider that the h linear momentum 1 h¯k of the vacuum state in quantum electrodynamics p 2 t- corresponds to the linear momentum of virtual photons. The Casimir effect, n in the cases of two parallel plates and the solid ball, is explained in terms of a u the pressure caused by the photons. Contrary to quantum electrodynamics, q we assume a finite number of virtual photons. : v i Key words: photon, trajectories, QED, Casimir effect, quantum vacuum. X r a 1 Introduction Suppes and de Barros (1994a, 1994b, 1996) began a foundational analysis on diffraction of light which formulated a probabilistic theory of photons with well-defined photon trajectories and without wave properties. The wave properties come from the expectation density of the photons. The photons ∗E-