Casimir Self-Interaction Energy Density of Quantum Electrodynamic Fields

Abstract

Quantum electrodynamic fields possess fluctuations corresponding to transient particle-antiparticle dipoles, which can be characterized by a nonvanishing polarizability density. Here, we extend a recently proposed quantum scaling law to describe the volumetric and radial polarizability density of a quantum field corresponding to electrons and positrons and derive the Casimir self-interaction energy (SIE) density of the field, ĒSIE, in terms of the fine-structure constant. The proposed model obeys the cosmological equation of state w=-1 and the magnitude of the calculated ĒSIE lies in between the two recent measurements of the cosmological constant Λ obtained by the Planck Mission and the Hubble Space Telescope.