Could dark energy be measured in the lab?
Abstract
The experimentally measured spectral density of current noise in Josephson junctions provides direct evidence for the existence of zero-point fluctuations. Assuming that the total vacuum energy associated with these fluctuations cannot exceed the presently measured dark energy of the universe, we predict an upper cutoff frequency of νc=(1.69±0.05)×1012 Hz for the measured frequency spectrum of zero-point fluctuations in the Josephson junction. The largest frequencies that have been reached in the experiments are of the same order of magnitude as νc and provide a lower bound on the dark energy density of the universe. It is shown that suppressed zero-point fluctuations above a given cutoff frequency can lead to 1/f noise. We propose an experiment which may help to measure some of the properties of dark energy in the lab.
- Publication:
-
Physics Letters B
- Pub Date:
- January 2005
- DOI:
- 10.1016/j.physletb.2004.11.060
- arXiv:
- arXiv:astro-ph/0406504
- Bibcode:
- 2005PhLB..605..295B
- Keywords:
-
- 74.81.Fa;
- 98.80.-k;
- 03.70.+k;
- Josephson junction arrays and wire networks;
- Cosmology;
- Theory of quantized fields;
- Astrophysics;
- Condensed Matter - Mesoscopic Systems and Quantum Hall Effect;
- Condensed Matter - Superconductivity
- E-Print:
- Replaced by final version accepted by Phys. Lett. B. 5 pages, 1 figure. additional text on the physical interpretation of the measured noise spectrum in Fig.1, more references added, Title has slightly changed