Giovanni Carugno Abstract

Giovanni Carugno

"The MIR experiment: toward an in-vacuum detection of the Dynamical Casimir Effect."

ABSTRACT

We present the principle and the status of the MIR (Motion Induced Radiation) experiment which is presently running in Italy, at the Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro of INFN, to detect the Dynamical Casimir Effect, namely photon generation due to non-adiabatic motion of a boundary of the electromagnetic field. This effect is related to the QED structure of vacuum, being the only direct evidence of the existence of vacuum fluctuations. The experiment is based on an effective mirror motion, with the reflectivity of a semiconductor slab being modulated at 4.6 GHz by a laser beam. The effect is enhanced via parametric amplification inside a superconducting microwave cavity. The assembly of the experimental setup has recently been completed and we are presenting running tests of the parametric amplification mechanism on photons pre-charged in the cavity.