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This Defense Intelligence Reference Document from the Defense Intelligence Agency, dated 6 April 2010, is one in a series of FY 2009 advanced technology reports produced under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications (AAWSA) program. It reviews the physics of zero-point field energy in the quantum vacuum and proposed schemes for extracting it, including the Casimir effect, Forward's vacuum-fluctuation battery, and resonant dielectric spheres. It notes that no practicable extraction technique has been demonstrated in the laboratory.
UNCLASSIFIED/ ,'1"1!11'- l!ll"l"!!!llit tl!II!! l!IHLY Figure 8. Experimental Apparatus for Ground State Energy Reduction Tests TUNABLE CASIMIR EFFECT As previously discussed, the Casimir Effect is a unique ZPF-driven quantum force that occurs between closely-spaced conductive cavity walls (or plates). If left unfettered, the plates will collapse together and energy is converted from the ZPF into heat (or other forms of energy) in accordance with the expression EI A= -n 2hc l720d-', where E/A is the energy per unit area of the plates and dis the plate separation. Investigation of this mechanism by Cole and Puthoff (Reference 11) showed that this process fully obeys energy conservation and thermodynamic laws. Although the Casimir force is conservative, and thus the Casimir device might appear to be a one-shot device, the fact that the attractive Casimir force is weaker for dielectric plates compared to conductive plates raises the possibility of the use of thin-film switchable mirrors to obtain a recycling engine (Reference 29-31). Figure 9 shows a comparison of the strength of the Casimir force in a conductive cavity with that in a dielectric cavity. In such an application the plates are drawn together by the stronger force associated with the conducting state and withdrawn after switching to the dielectric state. The engine cycle for this concept is shown in Figure 10. Assuming optimistic conditions for practical devices (negligible energy required for switching; plate separation oscillations between 30 nm and 15 nm for 1 cm 2 plates; driving circuit 14 UNCLASSIFIED/ ,'f811. 8ffllil"li Wliilii a,11.•t
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