Gravity and the Quantum Vacuum Inertia Hypothesis
(April 2005)Abstract
In previous work it has been shown that the electromagnetic quantum vacuum,
or electromagnetic zero-point field, makes a contribution to the inertial
reaction force on an accelerated object. We show that the result for inertial
mass can be extended to passive gravitational mass. As a consequence the weak
equivalence principle, which equates inertial to passive gravitational mass,
appears to be explainable. This in turn leads to a straightforward derivation
of the classical Newtonian gravitational force. We call the inertia and
gravitation connection with the vacuum fields the quantum vacuum inertia
hypothesis. To date only the electromagnetic field has been considered. It
remains to extend the hypothesis to the effects of the vacuum fields of the
other interactions. We propose an idealized experiment involving a cavity
resonator which, in principle, would test the hypothesis for the simple case in
which only electromagnetic interactions are involved. This test also suggests a
basis for the free parameter $\eta(\nu)$ which we have previously defined to
parametrize the interaction between charge and the electromagnetic zero-point
field contributing to the inertial mass of a particle or object.
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