Sonoluminescence as a QED vacuum effect: Probing Schwinger's proposal

Abstract

Several years ago Schwinger proposed a physical mechanism for sonoluminescence in terms of photon production due to changes in the properties of the quantum-electrodynamic (QED) vacuum arising from a collapsing dielectric bubble. This mechanism can be re-phrased in terms of the Casimir effect and has recently been the subject of considerable controversy. The present paper probes Schwinger's suggestion in detail: Using the sudden approximation we calculate Bogolubov coefficients relating the QED vacuum in the presence of the expanded bubble to that in the presence of the collapsed bubble. In this way we derive an estimate for the spectrum and total energy emitted. We verify that in the sudden approximation there is an efficient production of photons, and further that the main contribution to this dynamic Casimir effect comes from a volume term, as per Schwinger's original calculation. However, we also demonstrate that the timescales required to implement Schwinger's original suggestion are not physically relevant to sonoluminescence. Although Schwinger was correct in his assertion that changes in the zero-point energy lead to photon production, nevertheless his original model is not appropriate for sonoluminescence. In other works (see quant-ph/9805023, quant-ph/9904013, quant-ph/9904018, quant-ph/9905034) we have developed a variant of Schwinger's model that is compatible with the physically required timescales.

18 pages, ReV_TeX 3.2, 9 figures. Major revisions: This document is now limited to providing a probe of Schwinger's original suggestion for sonoluminescence. For details on our own variant of Schwinger's ideas see quant-ph/9805023, quant-ph/9904013, quant-ph/9904018, quant-ph/9905034

References in corpus (5)

• Gauge Theories with Cayley-Klein $SO(2;j)$ and $SO(3;j)$ Gauge Groups
• Sonoluminescence as a QED vacuum effect. I: The Physical Scenario
• Sonoluminescence: Two-photon correlations as a test of thermality
• Sonoluminescence: Bogolubov coefficients for the QED vacuum of a time-dependent dielectric bubble
• Sonoluminescence as a QED vacuum effect. II: Finite Volume Effects

Cited by in corpus (17)

• New Developments in the Casimir Effect
• On the ground state energy for a penetrable sphere and for a dielectric ball
• Cosmological particle production in emergent rainbow spacetimes
• Sonoluminescence as a QED vacuum effect. I: The Physical Scenario
• Casimir Energies for Spherically Symmetric Cavities
• Casimir's energy of a conducting sphere and of a dilute dielectric ball
• Bounding the Bogoliubov coefficients
• Quantum vacuum radiation in optical glass
• Sonoluminescence: Two-photon correlations as a test of thermality
• Sonoluminescence as a QED vacuum effect. II: Finite Volume Effects
• Casimir effect for a dilute dielectric ball at finite temperature
• Particle creation by moving spherical shell in the dynamical Casimir effect
• Particle creation in an oscillating spherical cavity
• Emergent spacetimes
• Sonoluminescence and the QED vacuum
• Gamma-Ray Burst Phenomenon as Collapse of QED Magnetized Vacuum Bubble: Analogy with Sonoluminescence
• Transition Radiation and the Origin of Sonoluminescence