Momentum transfer from vacuum field to anisotropic electromagnetic media

It is demonstrated that many novel vacuum effects will be caused if an anisotropic electromagnetic environment, which can break the universal symmetry of vacuum, is achieved. It is thus possible for the momentum to be transferred from the vacuum zero-point field to the anisotropic electromagnetic media. In addition to the effect considered by Feigel more recently [A. Feigel, Phys. Rev. Lett. 92 (2004) 020404], there may exist another vacuum-fluctuation contribution to the momentum of a medium. Such an effect has a relativistic origin (resulting from the relativistic transformation of the optical constants), which, however, was not taken into account by Feigel.