Canonical quantization of the electromagnetic field interacting with a moving dielectric

TL;DR

This paper develops a canonical quantization framework for the electromagnetic field interacting with a moving, dispersive, and dissipative medium, revealing negative energy modes and quantum friction phenomena.

Contribution

It introduces a Hamiltonian with negative energy modes for a moving dielectric medium, providing a quantum description of phenomena like quantum friction.

Findings

Normal modes are altered by medium motion

Hamiltonian includes negative energy modes

Detector can be excited at zero temperature

Abstract

The electromagnetic field is canonically quantized in the presence of a linear, dispersive and dissipative medium that is in uniform motion. Specifically we calculate the change in the normal modes of the coupled matter-field system and find a Hamiltonian that contains negative energy normal modes. We interpret these modes as the origin of phenomena such as quantum friction, and find that a detector initially in its ground state and coupled to the electromagnetic field in the vicinity of, or within a uniformly moving medium has a non-zero probability of excitation at T=0K.