1 research outputs found
Brownian Motion in Robertson-Walker Space-Times from electromagnetic Vacuum Fluctuations
We consider classical particles coupled to the quantized electromagnetic
field in the background of a spatially flat Robertson-Walker universe. We find
that these particles typically undergo Brownian motion and acquire a non-zero
mean squared velocity which depends upon the scale factor of the universe. This
Brownian motion can be interpreted as due to non-cancellation of
anti-correlated vacuum fluctuations in the time dependent background
space-time. We consider several types of coupling to the electromagnetic field,
including particles with net electric charge, a magnetic dipole moment, and
electric polarizability. We also investigate several different model scale
factors.Comment: 29 pages, 7 figure