Could dark energy be measured in the lab ?

The experimentally measured spectral density of current noise in Josephson junctions provides direct evidence for the existence of zero-point fluctuations. Assuming that the total vacuum energy associated with these fluctuations cannot exceed the presently measured dark energy of the universe, we predict an upper cutoff frequency of νc = (1.69 ± 0.05) × 1012 Hz for the measured frequency spectrum of zero-point fluctuations in the Josephson junction. The largest frequencies that have been reached in the experiments are of the same order of magnitude as νc and provide a lower bound on the dark energy density of the universe. It is shown that suppressed zero-point fluctuations above a given cutoff frequency can lead to 1/f noise. We propose an experiment which may help to measure some of the properties of dark energy in the lab.  2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. PACS: 74.81.Fa; 98.80.-k; 03.70.+k