Updated

Updated · Tech Times · Jul 16

Oslo Physicists Predict Infinite Photon States From 1 Mirror Removed Mid-Reflection

Updated

Updated · Tech Times · Jul 16

Oslo Physicists Predict Infinite Photon States From 1 Mirror Removed Mid-Reflection

Q: If removing a mirror spawns new photons from the vacuum, where does the sudden burst of extra energy actually come from?

The extra energy comes from whatever changes the mirror or boundary, not from “nothing.” In this setup, removing the mirror is an active intervention that does work on the electromagnetic field. Quantum field theory then says the field’s allowed modes change abruptly, and that mode change can turn vacuum fluctuations into real photons through the same Bogoliubov-mixing mechanism used to describe the dynamic Casimir effect. So the vacuum is not acting like a free energy source. The vacuum supplies the quantum fluctuations that can be converted into detectable photons, but the energy budget is paid for by the external agent that makes the mirror disappear or rapidly changes its reflectivity. In a realistic experiment, that would be a drive pulse, switching circuit, moving boundary, or other control system. That is also why the idealized “instantaneous removal” case produces a mathematical divergence. An infinitely fast boundary change would require unbounded bandwidth and, effectively, unlimited input energy. Real mirrors and switches change over a finite time, which cuts off the highest frequencies and keeps the number of created photons finite and small. The Oslo result is therefore not a violation of energy conservation. It is a redistribution of energy caused by a sudden boundary change: some energy remains associated with the original photon, and some can appear as additional photons created from the field because the switching process injected energy into the system.

1 articles · Updated · Tech Times · Jul 16

A July 15 Physical Review Letters paper says removing a perfect mirror while 1 photon is still reflecting creates a quantum state spanning 0 to infinitely many photons, not two split photon fragments.
The team found that an instantaneous boundary change forces the electromagnetic field to reconnect through a Bogoliubov transformation, generating unbounded high-frequency components and a logarithmically divergent expected photon count.
Real experiments would avoid that infinity: any finite switching time regularizes the effect, leaving a small but potentially detectable excess of photons above the classical expectation.
Locally, the state still looks ordinary — a single photon on one side of the transition region and vacuum on the other — while its global structure carries the full quantum strangeness.
The result extends the dynamic Casimir effect beyond vacuum-only setups and points to superconducting-circuit tests, using tools first demonstrated in 2011 and mathematically linked to Hawking-radiation models.

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Tech Times8d ago

University of Oslo Physicists Predict Infinite Photons from Mirror Removal Mid-Reflection

Could this bizarre truncated photon effect finally allow scientists to simulate black hole radiation directly on a laboratory microchip?

If removing a mirror spawns new photons from the vacuum, where does the sudden burst of extra energy actually come from?

If a photon's identity depends on its surroundings, is the fundamental building block of light merely an illusion created by boundaries?

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1 total

Tech Times8d ago

University of Oslo Physicists Predict Infinite Photons from Mirror Removal Mid-Reflection

Oslo Physicists Predict Infinite Photon States From 1 Mirror Removed Mid-Reflection

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