This paper is a study of the electromagnetic radiation at temperature $T$ in a thin slab whose walls are made of a perfect conductor. The two large parallel walls of area $A$ are apart by a distance $d\ll \sqrt{A}$. We take $T$, $A$, and $d$ as thermodynamic parameters, obtaining the free energy from a procedure that involves the integration over the slab of the ensemble average of the stress-energy-momentum tensor calculated long ago by Brown and Maclay. Both thermodynamic regimes $kTd/\hbar c\gg 1$ and $kTd/\hbar c\ll 1$ are fully addressed. We show that certain thermodynamic quantities which are notoriously ill defined (or trivial) in ordinary blackbody thermodynamics are now well defined (or nontrivial) due to presence of boundary conditions at the walls of the slab ("Casimir's effect"). The relationships among such quantities are fully explored and it is speculated that they may be experimentally checked. Stability is addressed, showing that electromagnetic radiation in the slab is thermally stable; but mechanically unstable. We investigate thermodynamic processes where temperature, internal energy, entropy and enthalpy are each taken to be constant, revealing rather atypical behaviors. For example, in sharp contrast with what one would expect from a gas, when $kTd/\hbar c\ll 1$, "free expansion" gives place to "free contraction'' in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics. As a check of consistency of the formulae we remark that various Carnot cycles have been examined and verified that they correctly lead to Carnot's efficiency.
We propose a dual thermodynamic description of a classical instability of generalised black hole spacetimes. From a thermodynamic perspective, the instability is due to negative compressibility in regions where the Casimir pressure is large. The argument indicates how the correspondence between thermodynamic and classical instability for horizons may be extended to cases without translational invariance.
An analogy between the subtraction procedure in the Gibbons-Hawking Euclidean path integral approach to Horizon's Thermodynamics and the Casimir effect is shown. Then a conjecture about a possible Casimir nature of the Gibbons-Hawking subtraction is made in the framework of Sakharov's induced gravity. In this framework it appears that the degrees of freedom involved in the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy are naturally identified with zero--point modes of the matter fields. Some consequences of this view are sketched.
We study the Casimir energy of a spherical shell of radius $a$ in $κ$-Minkowski spacetime for a complex field with an asymmetric ordering and obtain the energy up to $O(1/κ^2)$. We show that the vacuum breaks particle and anti-particle symmetry if one requires the spectra to be consistent with the blackbody radiation at the commutative limit.
Thermal Casimir Effect in A Schwarzschild-like Wormhole Spacetime
Sepuluh Nopember Institute of Technology（十十一月理工大学）；Universitas Islam Negeri Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang（穆拉纳马利克伊布拉欣伊斯兰国立大学）；Asia Pacific Center for Theoretical Physics（亚太理论物理中心）；National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN)（国家研究与创新署）；Universitas Indonesia（印度尼西亚大学）
The Casimir energy for the transverse oscillations of a piecewise uniform closed string is calculated. The great adaptibility of this string model with respect to various regularization methods is pointed out. We survey several regularization methods: the cutoff method, the complex contour integration method, and the zeta-function method. The most powerful method in the present case is the contour integration method. The Casimir energy turns out to be negative, and more so the larger is the number of pieces in the string. The thermodynamic free energy F is calculated for a two-piece string in …
The limit n to infinity of the classical O(n) phi^4 model on a 3d film with free surfaces is studied. Its exact solution involves a self-consistent 1d Schrödinger equation, which is solved numerically for a partially discretized as well as for a fully discrete lattice model. Numerically exact results are obtained for the scaled Casimir force at all temperatures. Obtained via a single framework, they exhibit all relevant qualitative features of the thermodynamic Casimir force known from wetting experiments on Helium-4 and Monte Carlo simulations, including a pronounced minimum below the bulk cr…
In the present paper we investigate thermal fluctuation corrections to the vacuum energy at zero temperature of a conformally coupled massless scalar field whose modes propagate in the Einstein universe with a spherical boundary, characterized by both Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions. Thus, we generalize the results found in literature in this scenario, which has considered only the vacuum energy at zero temperature. To do this, we use the generalized zeta function method plus Abel-Plana formula and calculate the renormalized Casimir free energy as well as other thermodynamics quantit…
We consider the three-dimensional Ising model in a $L_\perp \times L_\parallel \times L_\parallel$ cuboid geometry with finite aspect ratio $ρ= L_\perp/L_\parallel$ and periodic boundary conditions along all directions. For this model the finite-size scaling functions of the excess free energy and thermodynamic Casimir force are evaluated numerically by means of Monte Carlo simulations. The Monte Carlo results compare well with recent field theoretical results for the Ising universality class at temperatures above and slightly below the bulk critical temperature $T_\mathrm{c}$. Furthermore, th…
We compute the Casimir thermodynamic quantities for a massive fermion field between two parallel plates with the MIT boundary conditions, using three different general approaches and present explicit solutions for each. The Casimir thermodynamic quantities include the Casimir Helmholtz free energy, pressure, energy and entropy. The three general approaches that we use are based on the fundamental definition of Casimir thermodynamic quantities, the analytic continuation method represented by the zeta function method, and the zero temperature subtraction method. We include the renormalized versi…
We consider the two-dimensional "Schwarzschild" and "Reissner-Nordstrom" stringy black holes as systems of Casimir type. We explicitly calculate the energy-momentum tensor of a massless scalar field satisfying Dirichlet boundary conditions on two one-dimensional "walls". These results are obtained using the Wald's axioms. Thermodynamical quantities such as pressure, specific heat, isothermal compressibility and entropy of the two-dimensional stringy black holes are calculated. A comparison is made between the obtained results and the laws of thermodynamics. The results obtained for the extrema…
There has been recent criticism of our approach to the Casimir force between real metallic surfaces at finite temperature, saying it is in conflict with the third law of thermodynamics and in contradiction with experiment. We show that these claims are unwarranted, and that our approach has strong theoretical support, while the experimental situation is still unclear.
In this note we calculate the Casimir effect of free thermal gravitons in Einstein universe and discuss how it changes the entropy bound condition proposed recently by Verlinde [hep-th/0008140] as a higher dimensional generalization of Cardy's formula for conformal field theories (CFT). We find that the graviton's Casimir effect is necessary in order not to violate Verlinde's bound for weakly coupled CFT. We also comment on the implication of this new Cardy's formula to the thermodynamics of black $p$-brane.
In this work we consider the generalized zeta function method to obtain temperature corrections to the vacuum (Casimir) energy density, at zero temperature, associated with quantum vacuum fluctuations of a scalar field subjected to a helix boundary condition and whose modes propagate in (3+1)-dimensional Euclidean spacetime. We find closed and analytical expressions for both the two-point heat kernel function and free energy density in the massive and massless scalar field cases. In particular, for the massless scalar field case, we also calculate the thermodynamics quantities internal energy …
The temperature dependence of the Casimir force between a real metallic plate and a metallic sphere is analyzed on the basis of optical data concerning the dispersion relation of metals such as gold and copper. Realistic permittivities imply, together with basic thermodynamic considerations, that the transverse electric zero mode does not contribute. This results in observable differences with the conventional prediction, which does not take this physical requirement into account. The results are shown to be consistent with the third law of thermodynamics, as well as being consistent with curr…
Systems with an O(n) symmetrical Hamiltonian are considered in a $d$-dimensional slab geometry of macroscopic lateral extension and finite thickness $L$ that undergo a continuous bulk phase transition in the limit $L\to\infty$. The effective forces induced by thermal fluctuations at and above the bulk critical temperature $T_{c,\infty}$ (thermodynamic Casimir effect) are investigated below the upper critical dimension $d^*=4$ by means of field-theoretic renormalization group methods for the case of periodic and special-special boundary conditions, where the latter correspond to the critical en…
Recently, we have demonstrated that for a certain class of Casimir-type systems ("devices") the energy of zero-point vacuum fluctuations reaches its global minimum when the device rotates about a certain axis rather than remains static. This rotational vacuum effect may lead to the emergence of permanently rotating objects provided the negative rotational energy of zero-point fluctuations cancels the positive rotational energy of the device itself. In this paper, we show that for massless electrically charged particles the rotational vacuum effect should be drastically (astronomically) enhance…
Recently, Brevik et al. [Phys. Rev. E 71, 056101 (2005)] adduced arguments against the traditional approach to the thermal Casimir force between real metals and in favor of one of the alternative approaches. The latter assumes zero contribution from the transverse electric mode at zero frequency in qualitative disagreement with unity as given by the thermal quantum field theory for ideal metals. Those authors claim that their approach is consistent with experiments as well as with thermodynamics. We demonstrate that these conclusions are incorrect. We show specifically that their results are c…
With the intent of exploring how the interplay between boundary effects and chiral symmetry breaking may alter the thermodynamical behavior of a system of strongly interacting fermions, we study the Casimir effect for the setup of two parallel layers using a four-fermion effective field theory at zero density. This system reveals a number of interesting features. While for infinitely large separation (no boundaries), chiral symmetry is broken or restored via a second order phase transition, in the opposite case of small (and, in general, finite) separation the transition becomes first order, r…
The finite temperature Casimir free energy, entropy, and internal energy are considered anew for a conventional parallel-plate configuration, in the light of current discussions in the literature. In the case of an "ideal" metal, characterized by a refractive index equal to infinity for all frequencies, we recover, via a somewhat unconventional method, conventional results for the temperature dependence, meaning that the zero-frequency transverse electric mode contributes the same as the transverse magnetic mode. For a real metal, however, approximately obeying the Drude dispersive model at lo…
The violation of the third law of thermodynamics for metals described by the Drude model and for dielectrics with finite \DC conductivity is one of the most interesting problems in the field of the Casimir effect. It manifests itself as a non-vanishing of the entropy for vanishing temperature. We review the relevant calculations for plane surfaces and calculate the corresponding contributions for a ball in front of a plane. In this geometry, these appear in much the same way as for parallel planes. We conclude that the violation of the 3rd law is not related to the infinite size of the planes.
We introduce a useful approach to find asymptotically explicit expressions for the Casimir free energy at large temperature. The resulting expressions contain the classical terms as well as the few first terms of the corresponding heat-kernel expansion, as expected. This technique works well for many familiar configurations in Euclidean as well as non-Euclidean spaces. By utilizing this approach, we provide some new numerically considerable results for the Casimir pressure in some rectangular ideal-metal cavities. For instance, we show that at sufficiently large temperature, the Casimir pressu…
We have performed a precise experimental determination of the Casimir pressure between two gold-coated parallel plates by means of a micromachined oscillator. In contrast to all previous experiments on the Casimir effect, where a small relative error (varying from 1% to 15%) was achieved only at the shortest separation, our smallest experimental error ($\sim 0.5$%) is achieved over a wide separation range from 170 nm to 300 nm at 95% confidence. We have formulated a rigorous metrological procedure for the comparison of experiment and theory without resorting to the previously used root-mean-sq…
Starting from an analytical expression for the Helmholtz free energy we calculate the thermal corrections to the Casimir energy-density and entropy within nearby ideal parallel plates in the vacuum of a massless scalar field. Our framework is the Kerr spacetime in the presence of quintessence and massive gravitons. The high and low temperature regimes are especially analysed in order to distinguish the main contributions. For instance, in the high temperature regime, we show that the force between the plates is repulsive and grows with both the quintessence and the massive gravitons. Regarding…
Assuming the conventional Casimir setting with two thick parallel perfectly conducting plates of large extent with a homogeneous and isotropic medium between them, we discuss the physical meaning of the electromagnetic field energy $W_{\rm disp}$ when the intervening medium is weakly dispersive but nondissipative. The presence of dispersion means that the energy density contains terms of the form $d[ωε(ω)] /dω$ and $d[ωμ(ω)] /dω$. We find that, as $W_{\rm disp}$ refers thermodynamically to a non-closed physical system, it is {\it not} to be identified with the internal thermodynamic energy $U$…
The Casimir effect is investigated in light-cone quantization. It is shown that for spacelike separation of the walls enclosing the system the standard result for the pressure exerted on the walls is obtained. For walls separated in light-cone space direction no regularization of the quantum fluctuations exists which would yield a finite pressure. The origin of this failure and its implications for other vacuum properties are discussed by analyzing the Casimir effect as seen from a moving observer approaching the speed of light. The possibility for calculation of thermodynamic quantities in li…
The basic results in calculations of the thermodynamic functions of electromagnetic field in the background of a dilute dielectric ball at zero and finite temperature are presented. Summation over the angular momentum values is accomplished in a closed form by making use of the addition theorem for the relevant Bessel functions. The behavior of the thermodynamic characteristics in the low and high temperature limits is investigated. The $T^3$-term in the low temperature expansion of the free energy is recovered (this term has been lost in our previous calculations).
We show that the vacuum ground state energy for massive scalars on a 1-dim L-sites periodic lattice can be interpreted as the thermodynamic free energy of particles at temperature 1/L governed by the Arutyunov-Frolov mirror Hamiltonian. Although the obligatory zero-point sum-over-frequencies is finite on the lattice, a renormalization prescription is necessary in order to obtain a physical sensible result for the lattice Casimir energy. The coefficients of every term in the large L expansion of the lattice Casimir energy are provided in terms of modified Bessel functions.
We analyze the high temperature (or classical) limit of the Casimir effect. A useful quantity which arises naturally in our discussion is the ``relative Casimir energy", which we define for a configuration of disjoint conducting boundaries of arbitrary shapes, as the difference of Casimir energies between the given configuration and a configuration with the same boundaries infinitely far apart. Using path integration techniques, we show that the relative Casimir energy vanishes exponentially fast in temperature. This is consistent with a simple physical argument based on Kirchhoff's law. As a …
Casimir effect is the attractive force which acts between two plane parallel, closely spaced, uncharged, metallic plates in vacuum. This phenomenon was predicted theoretically in 1948 and reliably investigated experimentally only in recent years. In fact, the Casimir force is similar to the familiar van der Waals force in the case of relatively large separations when the relativistic effects come into play. We review the most important experiments on measuring the Casimir force by means of torsion pendulum, atomic force microscope and micromechanical torsional oscillator. Special attention is …
The classical $n$-vector $ϕ^4$ model with $O(n)$ symmetrical Hamiltonian ${\cal H}$ is considered in a $\infty^2\times L$ slab geometry bounded by a pair of parallel free surface planes at separation $L$. The temperature-dependent scaling functions of the excess free energy and the thermodynamic Casimir force are computed in the large-$n$ limit for temperatures $T$ at, above, and below the bulk critical temperature $T_{\rm c}$. Their $n=\infty$ limits can be expressed exactly in terms of the eigensystem of a self-consistent one-dimensional Schrödinger equation. This equation is solved by numer…
We show that if one chooses the Einstein Static Universe as the metric on the conformal boundary of Kerr-AdS spacetime, then the Casimir energy of the boundary conformal field theory can easily be determined. The result is independent of the rotation parameters, and the total boundary energy then straightforwardly obeys the first law of thermodynamics. Other choices for the metric on the conformal boundary will give different, more complicated, results. As an application, we calculate the Casimir energy for free self-dual tensor multiplets in six dimensions, and compare it with that of the sev…
Recent work on non proper-gauge degrees of freedom in the context of the Casimir effect is reviewed. In his original paper, Casimir starts by pointing out that, when the electromagnetic field is confined between two perfectly conducting parallel plates, there is an additional physical polarization of the electromagnetic field at zero value for the discretized longitudinal momentum besides the standard two transverse polarizations at non-zero values. In this review, the dynamics of these additional modes is obtained from first principles. At finite temperature, their contribution to the entropy…
RG flow of central charge $c_{\rm eff}$ is investigated for the two boundary sine-Gordon model at the free Fermi limit. Thermodynamic Bethe ansatz approach is used to check the non-monotonic decreasing properties of $c_{\rm eff}$, its resonance, and the modification of $c_{\rm eff}$ due to the mismatch of the periodicity of a Lagrangian parameter and that of the boundary scattering parameter. The detailed analysis uses the singularity structure of the system on the complex rapidity plane.
Casimir entropies due to quantum fluctuations in the interaction between electrical bodies can often be negative, either caused by dissipation or by geometry. Although generally such entropies vanish at zero temperature, consistent with the third law of thermodynamics (the Nernst heat theorem), there is a region in the space of temperature and separation between the bodies where negative entropy occurs, while positive interaction entropies arise for large distances or temperatures. Systematic studies on this phenomenon in the Casimir-Polder interaction between a polarizable nanoparticle or ato…
The Casimir effect, reflecting quantum vacuum fluctuations in the electromagnetic field in a region with material boundaries, has been studied both theoretically and experimentally since 1948. The forces between dielectric and metallic surfaces both plane and curved have been measured at the 10 to 1 percent level in a variety of room-temperature experiments, and remarkable agreement with the zero-temperature theory has been achieved. In fitting the data various corrections due to surface roughness, patch potentials, curvature, and temperature have been incorporated. It is the latter that is th…
The Casimir energy for the transverse oscillations of a piecewise uniform closed string is calculated. The great adaptability of this string model with respect to various regularization methods is pointed out. We survey several regularization methods: the cutoff method, the complex contour integration method, and the zeta-function method. The most powerful method in the present case is the contour integration method. The Casimir energy turns out to be negative, and more so the larger is the number of pieces in the string. The thermodynamic free energy and the critical Hagedorn temperature are …
In this paper, we study the finite-temperature quantum fluctuation of a classical liquid induced by the topology of an effective conical spacetime, as well as by a quasi-periodic boundary condition. The conical spacetime could be either a disclination or a cosmic string. In this context, we consider a phonon field representing quantum excitations of the liquid density, which obeys an effective Klein- Gordon equation with the sound velocity replaced by the light velocity. We obtain closed analytic expressions for the thermal Hadamard function, and consequently, the renormalized mean square dens…
The Casimir effect at finite temperature is investigated for a dilute dielectric ball; i.e., the relevant internal and free energies are calculated. The starting point in this study is a rigorous general expression for the internal energy of a system of noninteracting oscillators in terms of the sum over the Matsubara frequencies. Summation over the angular momentum values is accomplished in a closed form by making use of the addition theorem for the relevant Bessel functions. For removing the divergences the renormalization procedure is applied that has been developed in the calculation of th…
In this paper we study the system of a scalar quantum field confined between two plane, isotropic, and homogeneous parallel plates at thermal equilibrium. We represent the plates by the most general lossless and frequency-independent boundary conditions that satisfy the conditions of isotropy and homogeneity and are compatible with the unitarity of the quantum field theory. Under these conditions we compute the thermal correction to the quantum vacuum energy as a function of the temperature and the parameters encoding the boundary condition. The latter enables us to obtain similar results for …
In view of the increasing accuracy of Casimir experiments, there is a need for performing accurate theoretical calculations. Using accurate experimental data for the permittivities we present, via the Lifshitz formula applied to the standard Casimir setup with two parallel plates, accurate theoretical results in case of the metals Au, Cu and Al. Both similar and dissimilar cases are considered. Concentrating in particular on the finite temperature effect, we show how the Casimir pressure varies with separation for three different temperatures, T={1, 300, 350}K. The metal surfaces are taken to …
In this manuscript we compute corrections to the global Casimir effect at zero and finite temperature due to Rainbow's Gravity (parametrized by $ξ$). For this we use the solutions for the scalar field with mass $m$ in the deformed Schwarzschild background and the corresponding quantized energies of the system, which represent the stationary states of the field and yield the stable part of the quantum vacuum energy. The analysis is made here by considering the limit for which the source mass, $M$, approaches zero, in order to verify the effects on the global Casimir effect in mini black holes n…
The Casimir energy for the transverse oscillations of a piecewise uniform closed string is calculated. The string is relativistic in the sense that the velocity of transverse waves is always equal to c. The great adaptibility of this string model with respect to various regularization methods is pointed out. We survey several regularization methods: the cutoff method, the complex contour integration method, and the zeta-function method. The most powerful method in the present case is the contour integration method. The Casimir energy turns out to be negative, and the more so the larger is the …
In any medium there are fluctuations due to temperature or due to the quantum nature of its constituents. If a material body is immersed into such a medium, its shape and the properties of its constituents modify the properties of the surrounding medium and its fluctuations. If in the same medium there is a second body then -- in addition to all direct interactions between them -- the modifications due to the first body influence the modifications due to the second body. This mutual influence results in a force between these bodies. If the excitations of the medium, which mediate the effective…
