{"id":215805,"date":"2025-06-12T09:04:18","date_gmt":"2025-06-12T14:04:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/oxford-physicists-recreate-extreme-quantum-vacuum-effects"},"modified":"2025-06-12T09:04:18","modified_gmt":"2025-06-12T14:04:18","slug":"oxford-physicists-recreate-extreme-quantum-vacuum-effects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/oxford-physicists-recreate-extreme-quantum-vacuum-effects","title":{"rendered":"Oxford physicists recreate extreme quantum vacuum effects"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/oxford-physicists-recreate-extreme-quantum-vacuum-effects.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Physicists at the University of Oxford have successfully simulated how light interacts with empty space \u2013 a phenomenon once thought to belong purely to the realm of science fiction. The simulations recreated a bizarre phenomenon predicted by quantum physics, where light appears to be generated from darkness. The findings pave the way for real-world laser facilities to experimentally confirm bizarre quantum phenomena. The results have been published in <em>Communications Physics<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Using advanced computational modelling, a research team led by the University of Oxford, working in partnership with the Instituto Superior T\u00e9cnico in the University of Lisbon, has achieved the first-ever real-time, three-dimensional simulations of how intense laser beams alter the \u2018quantum vacuum\u2019 \u2013 a state once assumed to be empty, but which quantum physics predicts is full of virtual electron-positron pairs.<\/p>\n<p>Excitingly, these simulations recreate a bizarre phenomenon predicted by quantum physics, known as vacuum four-wave mixing. This states that the combined electromagnetic field of three focused laser pulses can polarise the virtual electron-positron pairs of a vacuum, causing photons to bounce off each other like billiard balls \u2013 generating a fourth laser beam in a \u2018light from darkness\u2019 process. These events could act as a probe of new physics at extremely high intensities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Physicists at the University of Oxford have successfully simulated how light interacts with empty space \u2013 a phenomenon once thought to belong purely to the realm of science fiction. The simulations recreated a bizarre phenomenon predicted by quantum physics, where light appears to be generated from darkness. The findings pave the way for real-world laser [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-215805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215805\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}