Research on Gravity and Quantum Fluctuation Effects

引力与量子涨落效应研究

• 批准号: 1506066
• 负责人: Lawrence Ford
• 金额: $ 5万
• 依托单位: Tufts University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-08-01 至 2016-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1506066&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Research; Gravity; Quantum; Fluctuation; Effects

Many of the deepest problems in theoretical physics revolve around combining Einstein's theory of general relativity with quantum theory. The resulting theory is called "quantum gravity" and is needed to better understand the origin of the universe, the nature of space and time on small scales, and what happens inside black holes. The research supported by this award will use the latest techniques and tools to try to study quantum fluctuations and their effects, especially rare but large spontaneous fluctuations of energy density. These are subtle effects which are not well understood. The results of this research may have applications to other areas of science and possibly to technology. The large fluctuations to be studied may play a role in nonlinear optics and quantum tunneling, two areas which have broad applications. The project will also have educational benefits. Students will participate in the research and gain valuable experience from doing so. The project should also produce examples which can be used to explain some of the concepts of quantum theory and relativity to students on a variety of educational levels.The project will investigate the probability distributions for quantum stress tensor fluctuations and their applications to gravity theory and other areas of physics. Particular attention will be paid to the asymptotic form of the distribution which governs the probability for large fluctuations. One approach to be used is the calculation of the large moments of the distribution. Preliminary studies indicate that this asymptotic form falls rather slowly compared to that for a thermal distribution. This indicates that quantum vacuum effects could dominate over thermal effects for large fluctuations, and suggests that new physical effects might be discovered in this line of research. Several models will be examined to look for such effects. One will be the effects of radiation pressure fluctuations on quantum tunneling of electrons and other particles. Another model will examine the effects of electric field fluctuations on the propagation of light in a nonlinear material. This study is of interest both for optical physics, and as an analog model for the quantum lightcone fluctuations expected in a quantum theory of gravity. The project will also examine the role of quantum stress tensor fluctuations in the early universe, especially in inflationary models.

理论物理学中许多最深刻的问题都围绕着将爱因斯坦的广义相对论与量子理论结合起来。由此产生的理论被称为“量子引力”，需要更好地理解宇宙的起源，小尺度上的空间和时间的性质，以及黑洞内部发生的事情。该奖项支持的研究将使用最新的技术和工具，试图研究量子涨落及其影响，特别是能量密度的罕见但大的自发涨落。这些都是微妙的影响，没有很好地理解。这项研究的结果可能应用于其他科学领域，甚至可能应用于技术。研究的大涨落可能在非线性光学和量子隧穿中起作用，这两个领域有着广泛的应用。该项目还将产生教育效益。学生将参与研究，并从中获得宝贵的经验。该项目还应提供实例，用于向不同教育水平的学生解释量子理论和相对论的一些概念。该项目将研究量子应力张量波动的概率分布及其在引力理论和其他物理领域的应用。特别注意将支付给渐近形式的分布，其中管理的概率大波动。要使用的一种方法是计算分布的大矩。初步的研究表明，这种渐近形式的福尔斯下降相当缓慢相比，热分布。这表明，对于大的波动，量子真空效应可能比热效应更占主导地位，并表明在这一研究领域可能会发现新的物理效应。我们将研究几种模型来寻找这种效应。一个是辐射压力波动对电子和其他粒子的量子隧穿的影响。另一个模型将研究电场波动对光在非线性材料中传播的影响。这项研究是感兴趣的光学物理，并作为一个模拟模型的量子光锥波动的量子引力理论中预期的。该项目还将研究量子应力张量波动在早期宇宙中的作用，特别是在暴胀模型中。