Related papers: Local and Global Casimir Energies: Divergences, Re…
Quantum vacuum energy has been known to have observable consequences since 1948 when Casimir calculated the force of attraction between parallel uncharged plates, a phenomenon confirmed experimentally with ever increasing precision. Casimir…
Although Casimir, or quantum vacuum, forces between distinct bodies, or self-stresses of individual bodies, have been calculated by a variety of different methods since 1948, they have always been plagued by divergences. Some of these…
Quantum vacuum energy has been known to have observable consequences since 1948 when Casimir calculated the force of attraction between parallel uncharged plates, a phenomenon confirmed experimentally with ever increasing precision. Casimir…
The local Casimir energy density and the global Casimir energy for a massless scalar field associated with a $\lambda\delta$-function potential in a 3+1 dimensional circular cylindrical geometry are considered. The global energy is examined…
The vacuum expectation value of the electromagnetic energy-momentum tensor between two parallel plates in spacetime dimensions D > 4 is calculated in the axial gauge. While the pressure between the plates agrees with the global Casimir…
Several years ago we demonstrated that the Casimir energy for perfectly reflecting and imperfectly reflecting parallel plates gravitated normally, that is, obeyed the equivalence principle. At that time the divergences in the theory were…
Casimir forces are conventionally computed by analyzing the effects of boundary conditions on a fluctuating quantum field. Although this analysis provides a clean and calculationally tractable idealization, it does not always accurately…
The local Casimir energy density for a massless scalar field associated with step-function potentials in a 3+1 dimensional spherical geometry is considered. The potential is chosen to be zero except in a shell of thickness $\delta$, where…
We study the vacuum polarization (Casimir) energy in renormalizable, continuum quantum field theory in the presence of a background field, designed to impose Dirichlet boundary conditions on the fluctuating quantum field. In two and three…
Casimir energy is a nonlocal effect; its magnitude cannot be deduced from heat kernel expansions, even those including the integrated boundary terms. On the other hand, it is known that the divergent terms in the regularized (but not yet…
We study the Casimir problem as the limit of a conventional quantum field theory coupled to a smooth background. The Casimir energy diverges in the limit that the background forces the field to vanish on a surface. We show that this…
The effects of quantum fluctuations in fields confined by background configurations may be simply and transparently computed using the Green's function approach pioneered by Schwinger. Not only can total energies and surface forces be…
We apply the quasi-local stress-energy tensor formalism to the Casimir effect of a scalar field confined between conducting planes located in a static spacetime. We show that the surface energy vanishes for both Neumann and Dirichlet…
The local Casimir energy is investigated for a wedge with and without a circular outer boundary due to the confinement of a massless scalar field with general curvature coupling parameter and satisfying the Dirichlet boundary conditions.…
This paper continues the investigation of the Casimir effect with the use of the algebraic formulation of quantum field theory in the initial value setting. Basing on earlier papers by one of us (AH) we approximate the Dirichlet and Neumann…
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…
One of the very first applications of the quantum field theoretic vacuum state was in the development of the notion of Casimir energy. Now field theoretic Casimir energies, considered individually, are always infinite. But differences in…
We show that Casimir energy for a configuration of parallel plates gravitates according to the equivalence principle both for the finite and divergent parts. This shows that the latter can be absorbed by a process of renormalization.
It is well known that boundary conditions on quantum fields produce divergences in the renormalized energy-momentum tensor near the boundaries. Although irrelevant for the computation of Casimir forces between different bodies, the…
Casimir energy in presence of a weak gravitational field is discussed taking into account the issues related to energy and its conservation in a curved background. It is well-known that there are inherent difficulties in defining energy in…