Quantum self-propulsion of an inhomogeneous object out of thermal equilibrium
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In an earlier paper, we explored how quantum vacuum torque can arise: a body or nanoparticle that is out of thermal equilibrium with its environment experiences a spontaneous torque. But this requires that the body be composed of nonreciprocal material, which seems to necessitate the presence of an external influence, such as a magnetic field. Then the electric polarizability of the particle has a real part that is nonsymmetric. This effect occurs to first order in the polarizability. To that order, no self-propulsive force can arise. Here, we consider second-order effects, and show that spontaneous forces can arise in vacuum, without requiring exotic electromagnetic properties. Thermal nonequilibrium is still necessary, but the electric susceptibility of the body need only be inhomogeneous. We investigate four examples of such a body: a needle composed of distinct halves; a sphere and a ball, each hemisphere being made of a different substance; and a thin slab, each face of which is different. The results found are consistent with previous numerical investigations. Here, we take into account the skin depth of metal surfaces. We also consider the frictional forces that would cause the body to acquire a terminal velocity, which might be observable. More likely to be important is relaxation to thermal equilibrium, which can still lead to a terminal velocity that might be experimentally verifiable. A general treatment of such forces on a moving body, expressed in momentum space, is provided, which incorporates both propulsive and frictional forces. The source of the propulsive force is the nonsymmetric pattern of radiation from different parts of the body, the higher reflectivity of the metal portion playing a crucial role.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".