Finite-temperature Casimir effect in piston geometry and its classical limit

We consider the Casimir force acting on a d-dimensional rectangular piston due to a massless scalar field with periodic, Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions and an electromagnetic field with perfect electric-conductor and perfect magnetic-conductor boundary conditions. The Casimir energy in a rectangular cavity is derived using the cut-off method. It is shown that the divergent part of the Casimir energy does not contribute to the Casimir force acting on the piston, thus renders an unambiguously defined Casimir force acting on the piston. At any temperature, it is found that the Casimir force acting on the piston increases from −∞ to 0 when the separation a between the piston and the opposite wall increases from 0 to ∞. This implies that the Casimir force is always an attractive force pulling the piston towards the closer wall, and the magnitude of the force gets larger as the separation a gets smaller. Explicit exact expressions for the Casimir force for small and large plate separations and for low and high temperatures are computed. The limits of the Casimir force acting on the piston when some pairs of transversal plates are large are also derived. An interesting result regarding the influence of temperature is that in contrast to the conventional result that the leading term of the Casimir force acting on a wall of a rectangular cavity at high temperature is the Stefan–Boltzmann (or black-body radiation) term which is of order T ^d+1, it is found that the contributions of this term from the two regions separating the piston cancel with each other in the case of piston. The high-temperature leading-order term of the Casimir force acting on the piston is of order T, which shows that the Casimir force has a nontrivial classical ℏ→0 limit. Explicit formulas for the classical limit are computed.     

Finite temperature Casimir effect of massive fermionic fields in the presence of compact dimensions

We consider the finite temperature Casimir effect of a massive fermionic field confined between two parallel plates, with MIT bag boundary conditions on the plates. The background spacetime is Mp+1×Tq which has q dimensions compactified to a torus. On the compact dimensions, the field is assumed to satisfy periodicity boundary conditions with arbitrary phases. Both the high temperature and the low temperature expansions of the Casimir free energy and the force are derived explicitly. It is found that the Casimir force acting on the plates is always attractive at any temperature regardless of the boundary conditions assumed on the compact torus. The asymptotic limits of the Casimir force in the small plate separation limit are also obtained.     

Finite temperature Casimir effect in Kaluza–Klein spacetime

In this article, we consider the finite temperature Casimir effect in Kaluza–Klein spacetime due the vacuum fluctuation of massless scalar field with Dirichlet boundary conditions. We consider the general case where the extra dimensions (internal space) can be any compact connected manifold or orbifold without boundaries. Using piston analysis, we show that the Casimir force is always attractive at any temperature, regardless of the geometry of the internal space. Moreover, the magnitude of the Casimir force increases as the size of the internal space increases and it reduces to the Casimir force in (3+1)$(3+1)$-dimensional Minkowski spacetime when the size of the internal space shrinks to zero. In the other extreme where the internal space is large, the Casimir force can increase beyond all bound. Asymptotic behaviors of the Casimir force in the low and high temperature regimes are derived and it is observed that the magnitude of the Casimir force grows linearly with temperature in the high temperature regime.     

Finite temperature Casimir effect in spacetime with extra compactified dimensions

In this Letter, we derive the explicit exact formulas for the finite temperature Casimir force acting on a pair of parallel plates in the presence of extra compactified dimensions within the framework of Kaluza–Klein theory. Using the piston analysis, we show that at any temperature, the Casimir force due to massless scalar field with Dirichlet boundary conditions on the plates is always attractive and the effect of extra dimensions becomes stronger when the size or number of the extra dimensions increases. These properties are not affected by the explicit geometry and topology of the Kaluza–Klein space.     

The Casimir force on a piston in the spacetime with extra compactified dimensions

A Casimir piston for massless scalar fields obeying Dirichlet boundary conditions in high-dimensional spacetimes within the frame of Kaluza–Klein theory is analyzed. We derive and calculate the exact expression for the Casimir force on the piston. We also compute the Casimir force in the limit that one outer plate is moved to the extremely distant place to show that the reduced force is associated with the properties of additional spatial dimensions. The more dimensionality the spacetime has, the stronger the extra-dimension influence is. The Casimir force for the piston in the model including a third plate under the background with extra compactified dimensions always keeps attractive. Further we find that when the limit is taken the Casimir force between one plate and the piston will change to be the same form as the corresponding force for the standard system consisting of two parallel plates in the four-dimensional spacetimes if the ratio of the plate-piston distance and extra dimensions size is large enough.     

Repulsive and attractive critical Casimir forces

When confining vacuum fluctuations between two identical walls, the Casimir force manifests itself as a mutual attraction of the walls. When confining concentration fluctuations of a binary liquid mixture, an analogous force should exist near the critical temperature T_C; it is called the critical Casimir force. Here we show experimentally that this purely entropic force can be either attractive or repulsive, depending on the boundary conditions for the fluctuations. For symmetrical boundary conditions an attractive force is found while asymmetrical ones lead to a repulsive force. This is observed directly by confining the fluctuations in a thin wetting film. Depending on the boundary conditions either a thinning or a thickening of the film is observed when T→T_C.     

Attractive Casimir forces in a closed geometry

We study the Casimir force acting on a conducting piston with arbitrary cross section. We find the exact solution for a rectangular cross section and the first three terms in the asymptotic expansion for small height to width ratio when the cross section is arbitrary. Though weakened by the presence of the walls, the Casimir force turns out to be always attractive. Claims of repulsive Casimir forces for related configurations, like the cube, are invalidated by cutoff dependence.     

Casimir Force of Piston Systems with Arbitrary Cross Sections under Different Boundary Conditions

We study the Casimir force between two pistons under different boundary conditions inside an infinite cylinder with arbitrary cross section. It is found that the attractive or repulsive character of the Casimir force for a scalar field is determined only by the boundary condition along the longitudinal direction and is independent of the cross section, transverse boundary conditions and the mass of the field. Under symmetric Dirichlet-Dirichlet, Neumann-Neumann and periodic longitudinal boundary conditions the Casimir force is always attractive, but is repulsive under non-symmetric Dirichlet-Neumann and anti-periodic longitudinal boundary conditions. The Casimir force of the electromagnetic field in an ideal conductive piston is also investigated. This force is always attractive regardless of the shape of the cross section and the transverse boundary conditions.     

The casimir effect as a screening effect in quantized field theory

We study the vacuum energy and the vacuum force in a system of quantized scalar fields (massive and massless) in interaction with a given screening medium. Regularization of the energy is studied and the types of determinable forces are clarified. The Casimir effect—the attraction between two conducting plates in a vacuum, and its extension to different geometries —is re-examined in this framework. Instead of the puzzling repulsion for a spherical shell conductor, an attractive force is obtained in our case. As a by-product, we obtain a potential energy between two balls of large screening power and at remote distance R, ?a₁a₂/4πR³, where a_i are the ball radii.     

Mesoscopic Casimir forces in quantum vacuum

Traditionally, it is assumed that the Casimir vacuum pressure does not depend on the ultraviolet cutoff. There are, however, some arguments that the effect actually depends on the regularization procedure and thus on trans-Planckian physics. We provide the condensed matter example where the Casimir forces do explicitly depend on microscopic (correspondingly trans-Planckian) physics due to the mesoscopic finite-N effects, where N is the number of bare particles in condensed matter (or correspondingly the number of elements comprising the quantum vacuum). The finite-N effects lead to mesoscopic fluctuations of the vacuum pressure. The amplitude of the mesoscopic fluctuations of the Casimir force in a system with linear dimension L is a factor of N ^1/3～L/a _p larger than the traditional value of the Casimir force given by effective theory, where a _p =?/p _p is the interatomic distance which plays the role of the Planck length.     

Oscillating Casimir force between two slabs in a Fermi sea

The Casimir effect for two parallel slabs immersed in an ideal Fermi sea is investigated at both zero and nonzero temperatures. It is found that the Casimir effect in a Fermi gas is distinctly different from that in an electromagnetic field or a massive Bose gas. In contrast to the familiar result that the Casimir force decreases monotonically with the increase of the separation L between two slabs in an electromagnetic field and a massive Bose gas, the Casimir force in a Fermi gas oscillates as a function of L. The Casimir force can be either attractive or repulsive, depending sensitively on the magnitude of L. In addition, it is found that the amplitude of the Casimir force in a Fermi gas decreases with the increase of the temperature, which also is contrary to the case in a Bose gas, since the bosonic Casimir force increases linearly with the increase of the temperature in the region T < T_c, where T_c is the critical temperature of the Bose-Einstein condensation.     

Casimir forces in models with non-trivial topology

The Casimir forces, acting on the parallel plates in models with the compact subspace are investigated for the case of a scalar field. The field obeys the Robin boundary conditions on the plates. Depending on the values of the coefficients in the boundary conditions, the forces can be either attractive or repulsive. In models with a homogeneous compact subspace, they are the same for both the plates. In special cases of the Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions, the Casimir forces are attractive. Proceeding from general results, two particular cases with the subspaces S¹ and S² are considered.     

Casimir Force on a Piston in Randall-Sundrum Models

The Casimir effect of a piston for massless scalar fields which satisfy Dirichlet boundary conditions in the context of five-dimensional Randall- Sundrum models is studied. In these scenarios we derive and calculate the expression for the Casimir force on the piston. We also discuss the Casimir force in the limit that one outer plate is moved to the remote place to show that the nature of the reduced force between the parallel plates left. In the Randall~undrum model involving two branes the two plates attract each other when they locate very closely, but the reduced Casimir force turns to be repulsive as the plates separation is not extremely tiny, which is against the experimental phenomena, meaning that the RSI model can not be acceptable. In the case of one brane model the shape of the reduced Casimir force is similar to that of the standard two-parallel-system in the four-dimensional fiat spacetimes while the sign of force remains negative.     

Fermionic Casimir effect with helix boundary condition

In this paper, we consider the fermionic Casimir effect under a new type of space-time topology using the concept of quotient topology. The relation between the new topology and that in Feng and Li (Phys. Lett. B 691:167, 2010), Zhai et al. (Mod. Phys. Lett. A 26:669, 2011) is something like that between a Möbius strip and a cylindric. We obtain the exact results of the Casimir energy and force for the massless and massive Dirac fields in the (D+1)-dimensional space-time. For both massless and massive cases, there is a Z ₂ symmetry for the Casimir energy. To see the effect of the mass, we compare the result with that of the massless one and we found that the Casimir force approaches the result of the force in the massless case when the mass tends to zero and vanishes when the mass tends to infinity.     

Casimir Effect for Tachyonic Fields

In this paper we examine the Casimir effect for the case of a tachyonic field corresponding to particles with negative four-momentum squared, i.e., m² < 0. We consider here only the case of the one dimensional, scalar field. In order to describe tachyonic field, we use the absolute synchronization scheme preserving Lorentz invariance. The renormalized vacuum energy is calculated by means of the Abel-Plana formula. Finally, the Casimir energy and Casimir force as the functions of distance are obtained. In order to compare the resulting formula with the standard one, we calculate the Casimir energy and Casimir force for massive, scalar field (m² > 0).     

Vacuum Effects on Massive Spinor Fields: S 1× R 3 Topology

The aim of this work was to investigate the role played by an external field on the Casimir energy density for massive fermions under S ¹× R ³ topology. Both twisted- and untwisted-spin connections are considered and the calculation in a closed form is performed using an alternative approach based on the combination of the analytic regularization method and the Euler–Maclaurin summation formula. It is shown that no mass scale appears in the final result and, therefore, Casimir effect arises only from the boundary conditions and vacuum fluctuations induced by the coupling with the external field. PACS numbers: 11.10.Wx     

Rotational and vibrational temperatures of electronically excited BiN radicals in a chemiluminescent flame

Rotational and vibrational temperatures of electronically excited BiN radicals in a low-pressure Bi_x+N/N₂*/N₂+Ar chemiluminescent flame have been deduced from high-resolution Fourier-transform emission spectra. Bands of three electronic transitions, a³Σ⁺(a₁1)→X¹Σ⁺(X0⁺), b⁵Σ⁺(b₁0⁺)→X¹Σ⁺(X0⁺), and b⁵Σ⁺(b₁0⁺)→a ³Σ⁺(a₁1), were analysed to determine the optical temperatures in the a³Σ⁺(a₁1) and b⁵Σ⁺(b₁0⁺) states. The rotational temperatures characterising the rotational populations in the a₁1, v=0 and 1 states were determined from the a₁→X, 0-2, 0-3, 0-4, 1-1, and 1-2 bands. The b₁→X, 0-8 and 0-11 bands, and the b₁→a₁, 0-0 bands served to determine the rotational temperature of the radicals in the b₁0⁺, v=0 state. The temperatures derived from the various bands and transitions were well consistent and the mean rotational temperature was determined to be 353±18 K, which is close to the translational temperature of the gas.Vibrational temperatures of the radicals in the a₁1 and b₁0⁺ states were derived from band intensities of the a₁→X and from the b₁→X as well as b₁→a₁ systems, respectively. The Franck-Condon factors needed were calculated with RKR potentials deduced from literature values of the rotational and vibrational constants in the three states involved. The a₁1 vibrational temperature (336±21 K) was close to the rotational temperature, while the b₁0⁺ vibrational temperature (438±36 K) differed, likely due to the previously observed perturbation of the b₁0⁺ state.     

Quantum spring from the Casimir effect

The Casimir effect arises not only in the presence of material boundaries but also in space with nontrivial topology. In this Letter, we choose a topology of the flat (D+1)$(D+1)$-dimensional spacetime, which causes the helix boundary condition for a Hermitian massless scalar field. Especially, Casimir effect for a massless scalar field on the helix boundary condition is investigated in two and three dimensions by using the zeta function techniques. The Casimir force parallel to the axis of the helix behaves very much like the force on a spring that obeys the Hooke's law when the ratio r of the pitch to the circumference of the helix is small, but in this case, the force comes from a quantum effect, so we would like to call it quantum spring. When r is large, this force behaves like the Newton's law of universal gravitation in the leading order. On the other hand, the force perpendicular to the axis decreases monotonously with the increasing of the ratio r. Both forces are attractive and their behaviors are the same in two and three dimensions.     

Casimir Effect Under Two Dimensional Black Hole Spacetime Background with Global Monopole

A thin layer of the event horizon vicinity to the two-dimension black hole with a global monopole is considered as a system of the Casimir type. The energy-momentum tensor is derived in Boulware vacuum, Hartle-Hawking vacuum and Unruh vacuum respectively. The values are derived in the massless scalar field which satisfies the Dirichlet boundary conditions. Using the Wald's axioms, the result is got which is the same with the one derived by the usual regularized methods. Meanwhile, the energy, energy density, and pressure acting on the boundaries at the asymptotically flat background also are calculated too, and from the energy, Casimir force is derived. The Casimir energy and Casimir force are compared respectively in the background before and after radiation. PACS: 42.50.Lc.