The Role of Vacuum Fluctuations and Symmetry in the Hydrogen Atom in Quantum Mechanics and Stochastic Electrodynamics

Stochastic Electrodynamics (SED) has had success modeling black body radiation, the harmonic oscillator, the Casimir effect, van der Waals forces, diamagnetism, and uniform acceleration of electrodynamic systems using the stochastic zero-point fluctuations of the electromagnetic field with classical mechanics. However the hydrogen atom, with its 1/r potential remains a critical challenge. Numerical calculations have shown that the SED field prevents the electron orbit from collapsing into the proton, but, eventually the atom becames ionized. We look at the issues of the H atom and SED from the perspective of symmetry of the quantum mechanical Hamiltonian, used to obtain the quantum mechanical results, and the Abraham-Lorentz equation, which is a force equation that includes the effects of radiation reaction, and is used to obtain the SED simulations. We contrast the physical computed effects of the quantized electromagnetic vacuum fluctuations with the role of the real stochastic electromagnetic field. View Full-Tex