The Casimir effect in the boundary state formalism
Abstract
The Casimir effect in the planar setting is described using the boundary state formalism, for general partially reflecting boundaries. It is expressed in terms of the low-energy degrees of freedom, which provides a large distance expansion valid for general interacting field theories provided there is a non-vanishing mass gap. The expansion is written in terms of the scattering amplitudes, and needs no ultraviolet renormalization. We also discuss the case when the quantum field has a nontrivial vacuum configuration.
- Publication:
-
Journal of Physics A Mathematical General
- Pub Date:
- April 2008
- DOI:
- 10.1088/1751-8113/41/16/164011
- arXiv:
- arXiv:0801.2836
- Bibcode:
- 2008JPhA...41p4011B
- Keywords:
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- High Energy Physics - Theory;
- Quantum Physics
- E-Print:
- 11 pages. Proceedings contribution of talk given at the Workshop on Quantum Field Theory under the Influence of External Conditions (QFEXT07), University of Leipzig, September 16-21, 2007. To appear in J. Phys. A