We consider the vacuum energy for a configuration of two cylinders and obtain its asymptotic expansion if the radius of one of these cylinders becomes large while the radius of the other one and their separation are kept fixed. We calculate explicitly the next-to-leading order correction to the vacuum energy for the radius of the other cylinder becoming large or small.
We study $d$-dimensional Conformal Field Theories (CFTs) on the cylinder, $S^{d-1}\times \mathbb{R}$, and its deformations. In $d=2$ the Casimir energy (i.e. the vacuum energy) is universal and is related to the central charge $c$. In $d=4$ the vacuum energy depends on the regularization scheme and has no intrinsic value. We show that this property extends to infinitesimally deformed cylinders and support this conclusion with a holographic check. However, for $\mathcal{N}=1$ supersymmetric CFTs, a natural analog of the Casimir energy turns out to be scheme independent and thus intrinsic. We gi…
We study the cylinder-plate and the cylinder-cylinder Casimir interaction in the $(D+1)$-dimensional Minkowski spacetime due to the vacuum fluctuations of massless scalar fields. Different combinations of Dirichlet (D) and Neumann (N) boundary conditions are imposed on the two interacting objects. For the cylinder-cylinder interaction, we consider the case where one cylinder is inside the other, and the case where the two cylinders are outside each other. By computing the transition matrices of the objects and the translation matrices that relate different coordinate systems, the explicit form…
In his 2005 review, Gravity and the Thermodynamics of Horizons, Paddy suggested that a vacuum in thermal equilibrium with a bath of radiation should have a gradually diminishing energy. We work through the consequences of this scenario, and find that a coupling between the vacuum and a bath of black-body radiation at the temperature of the horizon requires the Hubble rate, $H$, to approach the same type of evolution as in the "intermediate inflation" scenario, with $H\propto t^{-1/3}$, rather than as a constant. We show that such behaviour does not conflict with observations when the vacuum en…
With a view toward application of the Pauli-Villars regularization method to the Casimir energy of boundaries, we calculate the expectation values of the components of the stress tensor of a confined massive field in 1+1 space-time dimensions. Previous papers by Hays and Fulling are bridged and generalized. The Green function for the time-independent Schrodinger equation is constructed from the Green function for the whole line by the method of images; equivalently, the one-dimensional system is solved exactly in terms of closed classical paths and periodic orbits. Terms in the energy density …
An important yet perplexing result from work in the 90s and 00s is the near-unity value of the ratio of fluctuations in the vacuum energy density of quantum fields to the mean in a collection of generic spacetimes. This was done by way of calculating the noise kernels which are the correlators of the stress-energy tensor of quantum fields. In this paper we revisit this issue via a quantum thermodynamics approach, by calculating two quintessential thermodynamic quantities: the heat capacity and the quantum compressibility of some model geometries filled with a quantum field at high and low temp…
