An ultimate goal of this research is to develop scientific models that unify quantum mechanics (which describes three of the four known fundamental interactions) with gravity, making SVT a derivative of quantum gravity and describes all known interactions in the Universe, at both microscopic and astronomic scales, as different manifestations of the same entity, superfluid vacuum.
Inspired by Dirac's ideas, K. P. Sinha, C. Sivaram and E. C. G. Sudarshan published in 1975 a series of papers that suggested a new model for the aether according to which it is a superfluid state of fermion and anti-fermion pairs, describable by a macroscopic wave function.
This did not allow them to describe the relativistic gravity as a small fluctuation of the superfluid vacuum, as subsequent authors have noted [citation needed].
[6] If the energies and momenta are below the excitation threshold then the superfluid background behaves like the ideal fluid, therefore, the Michelson–Morley-type experiments would observe no drag force from such aether.
[1][2] Further, in the theory of relativity the Galilean symmetry (pertinent to our macroscopic non-relativistic world) arises as the approximate one – when particles' velocities are small compared to speed of light in vacuum.
In the relativistic quantum field theory the physical vacuum is also assumed to be some sort of non-trivial medium to which one can associate certain energy.
According to SVT, this is because in the high-energy ("ultraviolet") regime the Lorentz symmetry starts failing so dependent theories cannot be regarded valid for all scales of energies and momenta.
Correspondingly, while the Lorentz-symmetric quantum field models are obviously a good approximation below the vacuum-energy threshold, in its close vicinity the relativistic description becomes more and more "effective" and less and less natural since one will need to adjust the expressions for the covariant field-theoretical actions by hand.
[13] Thus, in SVT this constant does not have any fundamental physical meaning, and related problems such as the vacuum catastrophe, simply do not occur in the first place.
According to general relativity, the conventional gravitational wave is: Superfluid vacuum theory brings into question the possibility that a relativistic object possessing both of these properties exists in nature.
Though, SVT does not a priori forbid an existence of the non-localized wave-like excitations of the superfluid background which might be responsible for the astrophysical phenomena which are currently being attributed to gravitational waves, such as the Hulse–Taylor binary.
[15] Within the framework of the Standard Model (or its extensions) the theoretical estimates of this parameter's value are possible only indirectly and results differ from each other significantly.
In this model the physical vacuum is conjectured to be strongly-correlated quantum Bose liquid whose ground-state wavefunction is described by the logarithmic Schrödinger equation.
It was shown that masses of elementary particles can arise as a result of interaction with the superfluid vacuum, similarly to the gap generation mechanism in superconductors.