Related papers: Can quantum mechanics breed negative masses?
We present a detailed description of a quantum scalar field theory within a flat spacetime confined to a cavity with perfectly reflecting moving boundaries. Moreover, we establish an equivalence between this time-dependent setting and a…
The origin of the observed acceleration of the expansion of the universe is a major problem of modern cosmology and theoretical physics. Simple estimations of the contribution of vacuum to the density energy of the universe in quantum field…
We apply the background field method and the effective action formalism to describe the four-dimensional dynamical Casimir effect. Our picture corresponds to the consideration of quantum cosmology for an expanding FRW universe (the boundary…
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…
We explore two hypotheses. First, the possibility that the quantum vacuum energy density of the Casimir effect contributes to a (local) gravitational vacuum energy density. Second, the possibility that a change in the gravitational coupling…
This article proves that according to the principles of quantum mechanics the existence of elementary particles of negative mass is physically plausible. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle plays an important role in this demonstration. By…
In this thesis, we investigate the dynamical Casimir effect, the creation of particles from vacuum by dynamical boundary conditions or dynamical background, and its backreaction to the motion of the boundary. The backreaction of particle…
We consider particle creation (the Dynamical Casimir effect) in a uniformly contracting ideal one-dimensional cavity non-perturbatively. The exact expression for the energy spectrum of created particles is obtained and its dependence on…
The Casimir effect, which predicts the emergence of an attractive force between two parallel, highly reflecting plates in vacuum, plays a vital role in various fields of physics, from quantum field theory and cosmology to nanophotonics and…
We have studied in a previous work the quantization of a mixed bulk-boundary system describing the coupled dynamics between a bulk quantum field confined to a spacetime with finite space slice and with timelike boundary, and a boundary…
An alternative for the Higgs mechanism is proposed. It predicts the appearance in the broken phase of a scalar background field which may be interpreted as describing an almost uniform (i.e., homogeneous and isotropic) superfluid condensate…
The discussion of vacuum energy is currently a subject of great theoretical importance, specially concerning the cosmological constant problem in General Relativity. From Quantum Field Theory, it is stated that vacuum states subject to…
Quantum field theory allows for the suppression of vacuum fluctuations, leading to sub-vacuum phenomena. One of these is the appearance of local negative energy density. Selected aspects of negative energy will be reviewed, including the…
Thermal effects on the creation of particles under the influence of time-dependent boundary conditions are investigated. The dominant temperature correction to the energy radiated by a moving mirror is derived by means of response theory.…
In this talk I review various developments in the past year concerning quantum vacuum energy, the Casimir effect. In particular, there has been continuing controversy surrounding the temperature correction to the Lifshitz formula for the…
In classical physics the energy density of a field, such as the electromagnetic field, is always positive. However, in quantum field theory it has been shown that the energy density can be negative. There are restrictions, called the…
In the presence of an external field, the imposition of specific boundary conditions can lead to interesting new manifestations of the Casimir effect. In particular, it is shown here that even a single conducting plate may experience a…
We present a rigorous, regularization independent local quantum field theoretic treatment of the Casimir effect for a quantum scalar field of mass $\mu\ne0$ which yields closed form expressions for the energy density and pressure. As an…
Moving mirrors are submitted to reaction forces by vacuum fields. The motional force is known to vanish for a single mirror uniformly accelerating in vacuum. We show that inertial forces (proportional to accelerations) arise in the presence…
We present a general procedure for calculating one-loop ``Casimir'' energy densities for a scalar field coupled to a fixed potential in renormalized quantum field theory. We implement direct subtraction of counterterms computed precisely in…