English

Seeking the Casimir Energy

Quantum Physics 2024-12-16 v1 Superconductivity

Abstract

Since its first description in 1948, the Casimir effect has been studied extensively. Standard arguments for its existence hinge on the elimination of certain modes of the electromagnetic field because of the boundary conditions in the Casimir cavity. As such, it has been suggested that the ground state energy of the vacuum within the cavity may be reduced compared to the value outside. Could this have an effect on physical phenomena within the cavity? We study this Casimir energy and probe whether the critical temperature TcT_c of a superconductor is altered when it is placed in the cavity. We do not detect any change in TcT_c larger than 12 microKelvin, but theoretically expect a change on the order of 0.025 microKelvin, roughly 1000 times lower than our achieved sensitivity.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2412.10179,
  title  = {Seeking the Casimir Energy},
  author = {David K. Campbell and Ian Bouche and Abhishek Som and David J. Bishop},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.10179},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2004.13771

R2 v1 2026-06-28T20:34:11.933Z