Large Zero Point Density Fluctuations in Fluids

Abstract

Zero point density fluctuations in a liquid and their potential observation by light scattering are discussed. It is suggested that there are two distinct effects of interest. One gives an average number of scattered photons, and depends upon an inverse power of the photon wavelength. The second effect arises in the scattering of finite size photon wave packets and depends upon an inverse power of the spatial size of the wave packet. This effect appears as large fluctuations in the number of scattered photons, and is analogous to the vacuum fluctuations of spacetime averages of the energy density in quantum field theory.