MIR, an experiment for the observation of the dynamical Casimir effect

Full text: The dynamic Casimir effect is one of the macroscopic consequences of quantum vacuum fluctuations. This effect foresees the creation of photons from vacuum when the field boundary conditions harmonically oscillate on time. In spite of the abundant theoretical work done in this field, the dynamic Casimir effect is up to now undetected: this is probably due to the main experimental difficulty, that is to realize the oscillating motion of a metallic wall at high frequencies (≥ 109 Hz). In fact, the most favourable condition in order to observe this Motion Induced Radiation is to study an electromagnetic resonant cavity oscillating in vacuum; in particular, one of the walls of the cavity should oscillate at a frequency that is twice one of the proper electromagnetic cavity frequencies (parametric resonance condition). An experiment based on the mechanical motion of a resonant cavity wall would be too difficult for present-day techniques. In this work we present the MIR experiment, in which we simulate a mirror motion by changing the actively reflecting surface of a composite mirror. (author)