Vacuum electromagnetic field correlations between two moving points

Abstract A renewed experimental interest in quantum vacuum fluctuations brings back the need to extend the study of electromagnetic vacuum correlations. Quantum or semi-classical models developed to understand various configurations should combine the effects of the zero-point fluctuations with those of blackbody radiation. In this paper, after a brief historical introduction and a rapid study of the electric field correlations in time domain, we propose exact and approximate expressions for the vacuum field correlations in Fourier space seen by moving points. We first present an exact computation of the electric field correlations, expressed in frequency space, between two points moving with opposite constant velocities on parallel trajectories. We also consider the electric field self-correlations, i.e. on the same moving point but at different frequencies, and comment the results related to special relativity. Then, we compute the exact main symmetrized quadratic electromagnetic field correlations between two points diametrically opposed on the same circular trajectory, with diameter r , covered at constant angular velocity Ω. We derive the expressions for the electromagnetic field correlations with itself and with its spatial derivatives, still at the locations of the moving points. Since the points we consider are accelerating, both the zero-point fluctuations and the blackbody spectrum give non-trivial results, for two-point correlations as well as for self-correlations. In both cases, results are shown at any vacuum temperature. For practical uses, we provide the first-order approximations in the small parameter <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">Ω</mml:mi> <mml:mi>r</mml:mi> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>/</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> <mml:mi>c</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> with c being the speed of light.