Related papers: A Casimir approach to dark energy
Vacuum fluctuations and the Casimir effect are considered in a cosmological setting. It is suggested that the dark energy, which recent observations suggest make up 73% of our universe, is vacuum energy due to a causal boundary effect at…
We propose a lower limit on the size of a single discrete gravitational extra dimension in the context of an effective field theory for massive gravitons. The limit arises in this setup from the requirement that the Casimir energy density…
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…
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…
Quantum vacuum energy (Casimir energy) is reviewed for a mathematical audience as a topic in spectral theory. Then some one-dimensional systems are solved exactly, in terms of closed classical paths and periodic orbits. The relations among…
We consider and review the emergence of singular energy densities and field fluctuations at sharp boundaries or point-like field sources in the vacuum. The presence of singular energy densities of a field may be relevant from a conceptual…
Vacuum fluctuations have observable consequences, like the Casimir force appearing between two mirrors in vacuum. This force is now measured with good accuracy and agreement with theory. We discuss the meaning and consequences of these…
Whereas the total energy in zero-point fluctuations of the particle physics vacuum gives rise to the cosmological constant problem, differences in the vacuum give rise to real physical phenomena, such as the Casimir effect. Hence we…
The Casimir energy density calculated for a spherical shell of radius equal to the size of the Universe projected back to the Planck time is almost equal to the present day critical density. Is it just a coincidence, or is it a solution to…
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…
We discuss the possibility of verifying the equivalence principle for the zero-point energy of quantum electrodynamics, by evaluating the force, produced by vacuum fluctuations, acting on a rigid Casimir cavity in a weak gravitational…
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…
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…
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…
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 study physics concerning the cosmological constant problem in the framework of effective field theory and suggest that a dominant part of dark energy can originate from gravitational corrections of vacuum energy, under the assumption…
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…
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…
In 1998 astronomers discovered that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. Somehow, something must have made gravity repulsive on cosmological scales. This something was called dark energy; it is described by Einstein's cosmological…
The vacuum energy density (Casimir energy) corresponding to a massless scalar quantum field living in different universes (mainly no-boundary ones), in several dimensions, is calculated. Hawking's zeta function regularization procedure…