Electromagnetic fluctuation forces across plasmas analogous to so-called weak nuclear interaction forces
Monday, November 3, 2014 - 09:30
in Physics & Chemistry
A new theoretical work establishes a long-sought-after connection between nuclear particles and electromagnetic theories. Its findings suggest that there is an equivalence between generalised Casimir forces and those that are referred to as weak nuclear interactions between protons and neutrons. The Casimir forces are due to the quantisation of electromagnetic fluctuations in vacuum, while the weak nuclear interactions are mediated by subatomic scale particles, originally called mesons by Yukawa. These findings by Barry Ninham from the Australian National University, in Canberra, and European colleagues, have now been published in the European Physical Journal D.
