Physical mechanisms underpinning the vacuum permittivity

Abstract

The debate about the emptiness of space goes back to the prehistory of science and is epitomized by the Aristotelian 'horror vacui', which can be seen as the precursor of the ether, whose modern version is the dynamical quantum vacuum. In this paper, we suggest to change a common view to 'gaudium vacui' and discuss how the vacuum fluctuations fix the value of the permittivity, e(0), and permeability, mu(0), by modelling their dynamical response by three-dimensional harmonic oscillators.