How vacuum fluctuations determine the properties of the vacuum

Abstract

Particle-antiparticle pairs are predicted by quantum field theory to appear as vacuum fluctuations. The model of the vacuum used here is postulated to have the following properties: To minimize the violation of conservation energy allowed by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and to avoid violating conservation of angular momentum, vacuum fluctuations of charged particle-antiparticle pairs appear as bound states in the lowest energy level that has zero angular momentum. These transient atoms are polarized by electric fields somewhat similarly to the way that ordinary matter is polarized. As a consequence, the permittivity $\epsilon_0$ of the vacuum can be calculated. Once the permittivity of the vacuum has been calculated, formulas for the speed of light $c$ in the vacuum and the fine-structure constant $\alpha$ immediately follow. The values for $\epsilon_0$, $c$, and $\alpha$ calculated here agree with the accepted values to within a few percent. Only the leading terms in the formulas have been retained in the calculations. The absence of dispersion in the vacuum is discussed and explained.