https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2004-00082-6
Quantum-vacuum geometric phases in the noncoplanarly curved fiber system
Centre for Optical and Electromagnetic Research, Joint Research Centre of Photonics
of The Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
and
Zhejiang University, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou Yuquan 310027, P.R. China
and
Zhejiang Institute of Modern Physics and Department of Physics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, P.R. China
Corresponding author: a jqshen@coer.zju.edu.cn
Received:
4
February
2004
Published online:
29
June
2004
The connection between the quantum-vacuum geometric phases (which originates from the vacuum zero-point electromagnetic fluctuation) and the non-normal order for operator product is considered in the present paper. In order to investigate this physically interesting geometric phases at quantum-vacuum level, we suggest an experimentally feasible scheme to test it by means of a noncoplanarly curved fiber made of gyrotropic media. A remarkable feature of the present experimental realization is that one can easily extract the nonvanishing and nontrivial quantum-vacuum geometric phases of left- and/or right-handed circularly polarized light from the vanishing and trivial total quantum-vacuum geometric phases. Since the normal-order procedure may remove globally the vacuum energy of time-dependent quantum systems, the potential physical vacuum effects (e.g., quantum-vacuum geometric phases) may also be removed by this procedure. Thus the detection of the geometric phases at quantum-vacuum level may answer whether the normal-order technique is valid or not in the time-dependent quantum field theory.
PACS: 03.65.Vf – Phases: geometric; dynamic or topological / 03.70.+k – Theory of quantized fields / 42.70.-a – Optical materials / 42.50.Xa – Optical tests of quantum theory
© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag, 2004
