Cutoff dependence of the Casimir force within an inhomogeneous medium
Abstract
We consider the ground-state energy of the electromagnetic field in a piston geometry. In the idealized case, where the piston and the walls of the chamber are taken as perfect mirrors, the Casimir pressure on the piston is finite and independent of the small-scale physics of the media that compose the mirrors; the Casimir energy of the system can be regularized and is cutoff independent. Yet we find that, when the body of the piston is filled with an inhomogeneous dielectric medium, the Casimir energy is cutoff dependent, and the value of the pressure is thus inextricably dependent on the detailed behavior of the mirror and the medium at large wave vectors. This result is inconsistent with recent proposals for regularizing Casimir forces in inhomogeneous media.
Citation
Horsley , S A R & Simpson , W M R 2013 , ' Cutoff dependence of the Casimir force within an inhomogeneous medium ' , Physical Review. A, Atomic, molecular, and optical physics , vol. 88 , no. 1 , 013833 . https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.88.013833
Publication
Physical Review. A, Atomic, molecular, and optical physics
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1050-2947Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2013 American Physical Society
Description
S.A.R.H. thanks the EPSRC for financial support, and the Weizmann Institute for their hospitality. W.M.R.S. thanks SUPA and the Weizmann Institute for their financial support.Collections
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