2013/02/21 by Marcel Urban, Francois Couchot, François Couchot +2 · 1 voice · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Noncommutative and Quantum Gravity Theories #Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect #Quantum and Classical Electrodynamics #physics.gen-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1140/epjd/e2013-30578-7
published as Eur. Phys. J. D, 67 3 (2013) 58 · 6 pages, Accepted for publication in European Physical Journal D. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1111.1847, arXiv:1106.3996
arxiv created 2013/02/21 · arxiv published 2013/02/21 · openalex publication_date 2013/03/01 · arxiv updated 2013/05/31 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
We show that the vacuum permeability and permittivity may originate from the magnetization and the polarization of continuously appearing and disappearing fermion pairs. We then show that if we simply model the propagation of the photon in vacuum as a series of transient captures within these ephemeral pairs, we can derive a finite photon velocity. Requiring that this velocity is equal to the speed of light constrains our model of vacuum. Within this approach, the propagation of a photon is a statistical process at scales much larger than the Planck scale. Therefore we expect its time of flight to fluctuate. We propose an experimental test of this prediction.