Gravity and the Quantum Vacuum Inertia Hypothesis

TL;DR

This paper proposes that the electromagnetic quantum vacuum contributes to inertial and gravitational mass, offering a potential explanation for the weak equivalence principle and deriving Newtonian gravity from quantum vacuum interactions.

Contribution

It extends the quantum vacuum inertia hypothesis to include gravitational mass and suggests an experimental test involving a cavity resonator.

Findings

Electromagnetic quantum vacuum contributes to inertial mass.

Weak equivalence principle can be explained via vacuum interactions.

Proposes an experiment to test the hypothesis with electromagnetic fields.

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.