Related papers: Casimir Effect confronts Cosmological Constant
The Casimir effect, a key observable realization of vacuum fluctuations, is usually taught in graduate courses on quantum field theory. The growing importance of Casimir forces in microelectromechanical systems motivates this subject as a…
The Casimir effect is a fundamental quantum phenomenon induced by the zero-point energy for a quantum field. It is well-known for relativistic fields with a linear dispersion relation, while its existence or absence for nonrelativistic…
This article aims at discussing the cosmological constant problem at a pedagogical but fully technical level. We review how the vacuum energy can be regularized in flat and curved space-time and how it can be understood in terms of Feynman…
The search for non-relativistic deviations from Newtonian gravitation can lead to new phenomena signalling the unification of gravity with the other fundamental interactions. Various recent theoretical frameworks indicate a possible window…
Associated with the cosmic acceleration are the old and new cosmological constant problems, recently put into the more general context of the dark energy problem. In broad terms, the old problem is related to an unexpected order of…
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…
Recent observations of high-redshift supernovae seem to suggest that the global geometry of the Universe may be affected by a `cosmological constant', which acts to accelerate the expansion rate with time. But these data by themselves still…
Increasing improvements in the independent determinations of the Hubble constant and the age of the universe now seem to indicate that we need a small non-vanishing cosmological constant to make the two independent observations consistent…
We show that the presence of a temporal electromagnetic field on cosmological scales generates an effective cosmological constant which can account for the accelerated expansion of the universe. Primordial electromagnetic quantum…
The Casimir effect is a macroscopic evidence of the quantum nature of the vacuum. On a ring, it leads to a finite size correction to the vacuum energy. In this work, we show that this vacuum's energy and pressure acquire additional, sizable…
The value of the cosmological constant arising from a crystalline model for vacuum cosmic space with lattice parameter of the order of the neutron radius [1] has been calculated. The model allows to solve, in an easy way, the problem of the…
In this paper, we study the Casimir effect in a curved spacetime described by gravitational actions quadratic in the curvature. In particular, we consider the dynamics of a massless scalar field confined between two nearby plates and…
The existence of irreducible field fluctuations in vacuum is an important prediction of quantum theory. These fluctuations have many observable consequences, like the Casimir effect which is now measured with good accuracy and agreement…
A general holographic relation between UV and IR cutoff of an effective field theory is proposed. Taking the IR cutoff relevant to the dark energy as the Hubble scale, we find that the cosmological constant is highly suppressed by 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…
Two perfectly conducting, infinite parallel plates will restrict the electromagnetic vacuum, producing an attractive force. This phenomenon is known as the Casimir effect. Here we use electromagnetic field correlators to define the local…
We demonstrate that by employing the correspondence between gauge theories in geometric and in deconstructed extra dimensions, it is possible to transfer the methods for calculating finite Casimir energy densities in higher dimensions to…
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 efficiently computed by consideration of the vacuum fluctuations that are…
A mechanism for suppressing the cosmological constant is described, using a superconducting analogy in which fermions coupled to gravitons are in an unstable false vauum. The coupling of the fermions to gravitons and a screened attractive…
A mechanism for suppressing the cosmological constant is developed, based on an analogy with a superconducting phaseshift in which free fermions coupled perturbatively to a weak gravitational field are in an unstable false vacuum state. The…