The Weight of Vacuum Fluctuations

Abstract

We examine the gravitational properties of Lamb shift energies. Using available experimental data we show that these energies have a standard gravitational behavior at the level of $\sim 10^{-5}$. We are motivated by the point of view that Lamb shift energies may be interpreted as a consequence of vacuum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field. If this is the case, our result is a test of the gravitational properties of quantum fluctuations. The result is of interest in relation to the problem of the zero-point energy contribution to the cosmological constant. Indeed, the problem presupposes that the zero-point energy gravitates as all other forms of energy, and this supposition is what we test.

7 pages. v2 with a comment added and some typos fixed. It matches article to be published in Phys. Lett. B

References in corpus (4)

• Dark Energy and the Accelerating Universe
• The Casimir Effect and the Quantum Vacuum
• How Does Casimir Energy Fall?
• How does Casimir energy fall? II. Gravitational acceleration of quantum vacuum energy

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