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Casimir effect Communication source Massless particle Transmission (telecommunications) Physics SIGNAL (programming language) Energy (signal processing) Curvature Detector Dimension (graph theory) Information transmission Work (physics) Computer science Telecommunications Optics Classical mechanics Particle physics Quantum mechanics Mathematics Geometry Programming language Pure mathematics Computer network

Robert H. Jonsson , Eduardo Martín-Martínez , Achim Kempf ·

YOU? · · 2015 · Open Access · · DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.114.110505 · OA: W2088385236

We show that it is possible to use a massless field in the vacuum to communicate in such a way that the signal travels arbitrarily slower than the speed of light and such that no energy is transmitted from the sender to the receiver. Instead, the receiver has to supply a signal-dependent amount of work to switch his detector on and off. This type of communication is related to Casimir-like interactions, and it is made possible by dimension-and curvature-dependent subtleties of Huygens' principle.