Motion induced by asymmetric excitation of the quantum vacuum

Abstract

During the last fifty-one years, the effect of excitation of the quantum vacuum field induced by its coupling with a moving object has been systematically studied. Here, we propose and investigate a somewhat inverted setting: an object, initially at rest, whose motion becomes induced by an excitation of the quantum vacuum caused by the object itself. In the present model, this excitation occurs asymmetrically on different sides of the object by a variation in time of one of its characteristic parameters, which couple it with the quantum vacuum field.