Related papers: Vacuum Energy as Spectral Geometry
A fundamental prediction of quantum mechanics is that there are random fluctuations everywhere in a vacuum because of the zero-point energy. Remarkably, quantum electromagnetic fluctuations can induce a measurable force between neutral…
Two sides of cosmological constant problem are discussed: a mysterious compensation of all contributions to vacuum energy with the accuracy of 100-50 orders of magnitude and a surprising equality of a constant vacuum energy density to the…
The Casimir energy is evaluated for massless scalar fields under Dirichlet or Neumann boundary conditions, and for the electromagnetic field with perfect conductor boundary conditions on one and two infinite parallel plates moving by…
The electromagnetic vacuum energy is considered in the presence of a perfectly conducting plane and a ball with dielectric permittivity $\varepsilon$ and magnetic permeability $\mu$, $\mu\ne1$. The attention is focused on the Casimir…
In discussions of the cosmological constant, the Casimir effect is often invoked as decisive evidence that the zero point energies of quantum fields are "real''. On the contrary, Casimir effects can be formulated and Casimir forces can be…
We review the definition of the Casimir energy steming naturally from the concept of functional determinant through the zeta function prescription. This is done by considering the theory at finite temperature and by defining then the…
We explicitly compute the dynamics of closed homogeneous and isotropic universes permeated by a single perfect fluid with a constant equation of state parameter $w$ in the context of a recent reformulation of general relativity, proposed in…
We revisit the path integral computation of the Casimir energy between two infinite parallel plates placed in a QED vacuum. We implement perfectly magnetic conductor boundary conditions (as a prelude to the dual superconductor picture of…
The behavior of the gravitating vacuum energy density in an expanding universe is discussed. A scenario is presented with a step-wise relaxation of the vacuum energy density. The vacuum energy density moves from plateau to plateau and…
Physicists have speculated about the properties of the quantum vacuum for at least 85 years; however, only recently have they understood the quantum vacuum sufficiently well to begin making testable predictions. Specifically, using…
Casimir forces are a manifestation of the change in the zero-point energy of the vacuum caused by the insertion of boundaries. We show how the Casimir force can be computed by consideration of the vacuum fluctuations that are suppressed by…
In this letter we propose a new interpretation of the Casimir effect. Concretely, we show that the Casimir energy can be written as the quantum ``Von Neumann'' entropy associated to a 2-qubit, mixed pseudo-density matrix of the relevant…
In addition to the two standard solutions of the quantum field equations having the form e^{+/-(iwt-ikx)}, there exist two additional solutions of the form e^{+/-(iwt+ikx). By incorporating these latter solutions, deemed "supplemental…
In this study, the Casimir energy for massive scalar field with periodic boundary condition was calculated on spherical surfaces with $S^1$, $S^2$ and $S^3$ topologies. To obtain the Casimir energy on spherical surface, the contribution of…
The problem of cosmological constant and vacuum energy is usually thought of as the subject of general relativity. However, the vacuum energy is important for the Universe even in the absence of gravity, i.e. in the case when the Newton…
We consider the vacuum energy of massive quantum fields in an expanding universe. We define a conserved renormalized energy-momentum tensor by means of a comoving cutoff regularization. Using exact solutions for de Sitter space-time, we…
The last decades have witnessed an unprecedented advancement in our knowledge of the large scale universe. In particular, increasingly accurate cosmological observations have allowed us to discover a form of "dark energy", which presently…
Topics concerning dark energy and the accelerating expansion of universe are briefly reported. Arguments about the quantum fluctuations of vacuum are examined in order to decide if the Casimir force really is a laboratory evidence of dark…
In a recent paper [arXiv:0904.2904] using a conjecture it is shown how one can calculate the effect of a weak stationary gravitational field on vacuum energy in the context of Casimir effect in an external gravitational field treated in 1+3…
The Casimir free energy for a system of two dielectric concentric nonmagnetic spherical bodies is calculated with use of a quantum statistical mechanical method, at arbitrary temperature. By means of this rather novel method, which turns…