International School of Advanced Studies (SISSA) | 2018 Mar 08
Together with gravity, the polarization of the quantum vacuum may allow stars to exist in unconventional configurations.
A new kind of star comes up from a study by SISSA’s postdoctoral researcher Raúl Carballo-Rubio. ... Carballo-Rubio has developed a novel mathematical model that combines general relativity with the repulsive effect of quantum vacuum polarization. The inclusion of this repulsive force allows describing ultracompact configurations of stars, which were previously considered by scientists not to exist in equilibrium. ...
In this study, the researcher has investigated the possibility that additional quantum mechanical forces that are largely expected to be present in nature, permit new equilibrium configurations for stars above this threshold. The additional force that has been taken into account is a manifestation of the effect known as “quantum vacuum polarization,” which is a robust consequence of mixing gravity and quantum mechanics in a semiclassical framework. ...
Stellar Equilibrium in Semiclassical Gravity - Raúl Carballo-Rubio
- Physical Review Letters 120(06):1102 (Feb 2018) DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.061102
arXiv.org > gr-qc > arXiv:1706.05379 > 16 Jun 2017 (v1), 06 Feb 2018 (v3)