Abstract

We consider the simple case of a nonrelativistic charged harmonic oscillator in one dimension, to investigate how to take into account the radiation reaction and vacuum fluctuation forces within the Schrödinger equation. The effects of both zero-point and thermal classical electromagnetic vacuum fields, characteristic of stochastic electrodynamics, are separately considered. Our study confirms that the zero-point electromagnetic fluctuations are dynamically related to the momentum operator p=−i ℏ ∂/∂ x used in the Schrödinger equation