Hydrogen Atom in the Cosmic Microwave Background

TL;DR

This paper calculates the tiny effect of the cosmic microwave background on hydrogen atoms using the Feynman-Vernon approach, revealing small symmetry-breaking corrections that imply similar effects on all matter.

Contribution

It introduces a quantitative method to estimate the CMB's effect on atomic energy levels, highlighting the breaking of time-reversal symmetry due to the universe's pervasive radiation.

Findings

CMB induces imperceptible but fundamental corrections to hydrogen energy levels.

The effect breaks time-reversal symmetry in atomic systems.

Small but universal influence of CMB on matter's quantum states.

Abstract

The cosmic microwave background covers the entire universe, which suggests the absence of ay closed system, except the universe itself. In this paper, I consider the effect of the cosmic microwave background on the hydrogen atom, which must be very small, otherwise, changes in energy levels would have been measurable. But how small is small? This I compute by considering a system in an environment or bath. I derived the bath's, (in this case the CMB) effect on the hydrogen atom in the Feynman-Vernon approach to an open system. The effect is small and quantified in terms of a correction to the hydrogen atom that breaks time-reversal symmetry, as expected of memory effects. This is significant. There are imperceptible changes in the state of the hydrogen atom, which means that the pervasive CMB must have similar small effects on other atoms, thus breaking time-reversal symmetry in all physical systems.