Defense Intelligence Reference Document Concepts For Extracting Energy From The Quantum Vacuum

UNCLASSIFIED/ iF&lil: 8FFlil.l1k MEii ODIi Y
smaller than that of the initial 8 = O vacuum state made by virtual fermions fully filling
its negative energy spectrum, then the vacuum state gains energy and must decay
from the initial vacuum state to the final vacuum state by quantum field fluctuations.
The difference in vacuum energies between the two vacuum states must be released.
Xue makes all the usual vacuum expectation value renormalization calculations upon r:F
and u, and found that the energetic difference between the vacuum states B = O and 8
+ O is negative, indicating that the vacuum energy of the B * O state is smaller than the
vacuum energy of the B = 0 state; that is, the vacuum state gains energy when the
external magnetic field is applied to it. He shows that this effect occurs because in a
finite volume of space and with a finite momentum cutoff at the Planck scale AP, the
total number of fermion states in the vacua of negative energy spectra £F and £Lare
finite and all these fermion states of negative energy levels from -AP to -mc 2 are fully
filled. The negative energy spectrum r:F is not degenerate, while the negative energy
spectrum EL is degenerate, and the total numbers of fermion states in both cases are
the same. On the basis of quantum field fluctuations toward the lowest energy state
and the Pauli principle, when the external magnetic field is applied upon the vacuum,
the vacuum reorganizes itself by fully filling all fermion states according to the
degenerate negative energy spectrum £L, instead of the non degenerate £F. As a
consequence, the vacuum makes its total energy lower. The energy released by this
decay process is: 6.E = -SaB'V / 3rc, where Vis the volume of space occupied by the
external magnetic field, and a is the electromagnetic fine structure constant.
In principle, this effect can occur for any value of the applied magnetic field, and in this
particular decay process a non-critical magnetic field is required. Xue predicts possibly
observable effects such as the vacuum acting like a paramagnetic medium that
effectively screens the strength of the external magnetic field to a smaller magnitude;
the associated ZPF could lead to the emission of neutrino-antineutrino pairs from the
vacuum; and photons will be spontaneously emitted. He estimated that the released
vacuum energy (6.E) will be about 1 percent of the total energy stored in the external
magnetic field, so it is not yet clear whether this vacuum decay mechanism will lead to
any beneficial energy extraction.
Melting the QCD Vacuum
The idea of supercriticality as discussed in Section V also has applications in other field
theories, such as those of pion fields, gluon fields (quantum chromodynamics or QCD),
and gravitational fields (general relativity). Static fields that are strong enough to cause
the normal vacuum, which is devoid of real particles, to break down into a new vacuum
in which real particles exist is also predicted for these fields. A review a vacuum decay
concept that is different from supercriticality in QCD theory follows.
In their study of the structured vacuum, Rafelski and MUiier (Reference 54) and Rafelski
(Reference 55) analyze the nature of the strongly interacting (QCD) vacuum and
elucidate its character from the Standard Model of particle physics and high energy
particle accelerator data. They concluded that in addition to the electroweak vacuum
(that is, the unified electromagnetic and weak force vacua) there exists a dual QCD
vacuum structure: one vacuum structure that is everywhere in space and consists of a
complicated soup of interacting gluons which confine the quarks - this is called the
ordinary or "frozen" vacuum; and another vacuum structure that is found inside
35
UNCLASSIFIED/ ;«F&lil: 8FFHiiI.«1k Wlilii a,.klf