Elsevier

Physics Letters B

Volume 605, Issues 3–4, 13 January 2005, Pages 295-300
Physics Letters B

Could dark energy be measured in the lab?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2004.11.060Get rights and content
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Abstract

The experimentally measured spectral density of current noise in Josephson junctions provides direct evidence for the existence of zero-point fluctuations. Assuming that the total vacuum energy associated with these fluctuations cannot exceed the presently measured dark energy of the universe, we predict an upper cutoff frequency of νc=(1.69±0.05)×1012 Hz for the measured frequency spectrum of zero-point fluctuations in the Josephson junction. The largest frequencies that have been reached in the experiments are of the same order of magnitude as νc and provide a lower bound on the dark energy density of the universe. It is shown that suppressed zero-point fluctuations above a given cutoff frequency can lead to 1/f noise. We propose an experiment which may help to measure some of the properties of dark energy in the lab.

PACS

74.81.Fa
98.80.-k
03.70.+k

Keywords

Zero-point fluctuations
Dark energy
Josephson junctions

Cited by (0)

1

Also: Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, 24-29 St Giles', Oxford OX1 3LB, UK.