Visual for the Casimir Effect
Sat, 05/09/2009 - 17:44
How's a visual of the Casimir experiment sound? I am seeing the plates in my mind and the virtual quanta pinched inside. This would probably make a cool animation in all 4 dimensions. For the X-T axis we would see the plates slowly drift together, for Z-T view it would appear from the top of the experiment, Y-T would not show anything special. I guess I'm thinking along the philosophy of conservation of energy and how it potentially can be violated here (virtual quanta). Would this visualization tells anything "special" about time's direction?
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Lowell
Hello Lowell:
It comes down only to equations, and figuring out how to use my user-hostile software for the equation at hand. It took me about a month to do the delayed choice experiment. I have not studied the Casimir effect. Let's do a two minute wiki-study:
That almost looks doable here. Two other players:
This would require a lattice of values for x, y, and z. Fortunately I have written q_lattice.
Uh-oh, the math now starts getting beyond my reach (analytic continuation...). To keep the scope doable, I would like to see the wave function, and the wave function squared (should be 1,0,0,0), and products of different wave functions.
Sounds like a massive amount of work, but at least it would generate pictures.
Doug