Related papers: Surface Vacuum Energy in Cutoff Models: Pressure A…
The form of the vacuum stress-tensor for the quantized scalar field at a dielectric to vacuum interface is studied. The dielectric is modeled to have an index of refraction that varies with frequency. We find that the stress-tensor…
Perfectly conducting boundaries, and their Dirichlet counterparts for quantum scalar fields, predict nonintegrable energy densities. A more realistic model with a finite ultraviolet cutoff yields two inconsistent values for the force on a…
Ultraviolet self-interaction energies in field theory sometimes contain meaningful physical quantities. The self-energies in such as classical electrodynamics are usually subtracted from the rest mass. For the consistent treatment of…
Motivated by a desire to understand quantum fluctuation energy densities and stress within a spatially varying dielectric medium, we examine the vacuum expectation value for the stress tensor of a scalar field with arbitrary conformal…
The renormalized energy-momentum tensor of vacuum has been deeply explored many years ago. The main result of these studies was that such a tensor should satisfy the conservation laws which reflects the covariance of the theory in the…
We consider a semi-infinite spatially dispersive dielectric with unequal transverse and longitudinal susceptibilities. The effect of the boundary is characterized by arbitrary reflection coefficients for polarization waves in the material…
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…
The idealized theory of quantum vacuum energy density is a beautiful application of the spectral theory of differential operators with boundary conditions, but its conclusions are physically unacceptable. A more plausible model of a…
We show how the use of the normal projection of the Einstein tensor as a set of boundary conditions relates to the propagation of the constraints, for two representations of the Einstein equations with vanishing shift vector: the ADM…
Rectangular cavities are solvable models that nevertheless touch on many of the controversial or mysterious aspects of the vacuum energy of quantum fields. This paper is a thorough study of the two-dimensional scalar field in a rectangle by…
We study the thermodynamics of Einstein gravity with vanishing cosmological constant subjected to conformal boundary conditions. Our focus is on comparing the series of subextensive terms to predictions from thermal effective field theory,…
The Casimir problem is usually posed as the response of a fluctuating quantum field to externally imposed boundary conditions. In reality, however, no interaction is strong enough to enforce a boundary condition on all frequencies of a…
We consider the initial boundary value problem for the Einstein vacuum equations in the maximal gauge, or more generally, in a gauge where the mean curvature of a timelike foliation is fixed near the boundary. We prove the existence of…
Continuing a program of examining the behavior of the vacuum expectation value of the stress tensor in a background which varies only in a single direction, we here study the electromagnetic stress tensor in a medium with permittivity…
We study the convergence to equilibrium in high dimensions, focusing on explicit bounds on mixing times and the emergence of the cutoff phenomenon for Dyson-Laguerre processes. These are interacting particle systems with non-constant…
We analyze the vacuum fluctuations and the stress-energy tensor of a scalar field of mass $M$ in a conical spacetime, where the topological singularity at the apex requires boundary conditions for the field equation. The necessity of…
Polarization of a vacuum as well as of dispersive and dissipative dielectric media with piece-wise and smooth inhomogeneities is studied with the goal to clarify the question of renormalizability of diverging electromagnetic stress-energy…
We consider the reversible exclusion process with reservoirs on arbitrary networks. We characterize the spectral gap, mixing time, and mixing window of the process, in terms of certain simple statistics of the underlying network. Among…
In relation to the BSSN formulation of the Einstein equations, we write down the boundary conditions that result from the vanishing of the projection of the Einstein tensor normally to a timelike hypersurface. Furthermore, by setting up a…
We resolve the long-standing problem of elucidating the cutoff phenomenon for a vast and important class of Markov processes, namely Markov diffusions with non-negative Bakry-\'Emery curvature. More precisely, we prove that any sequence of…