Comment on the sign of the Casimir force

The Casimir effect is an interesting phenomenon in the sense that it provides us with one of the primitive means of extracting the energy out of the vacuum. Since the original work of Casimir a number of works have appeared in extending the result to the case of more general topological and dynamical configurations of the boundary condition and to the circumstances at finite temperature and gravity. In the studies of the Casimir effects it is common to assume the free electro...

We employ path integral methods to calculate the Casimir energy and force densities in a chiral extension of QED. Manifestly gauge invariant perfect electromagnetic boundary conditions, a natural generalization of perfect electric and perfect magnetic conditions, are implemented directly in the action by the usage of auxiliary fields. The chiral properties of the vacuum are modelled using a background $\theta$ field, and we introduce techniques to efficiently calculate the pa...

The Casimir force is a spectacular consequence of the existence of vacuum fluctuations and thus deserves a place in courses on quantum theory. We argue that the scattering approach within a one-dimensional field theory is well suited to discuss the Casimir effect. It avoids in a transparent way divergences appearing in the evaluation of the vacuum energy. Furthermore, the scattering approach connects in a natural manner to the standard discussion of one-dimensional scattering...

Zero-point fluctuations in quantum fields give rise to observable forces between material bodies, the so-called Casimir forces. In this lecture I present some results of the theory of the Casimir effect, primarily formulated in terms of Green's functions. There is an intimate relation between the Casimir effect and van der Waals forces. Applications to conductors and dielectric bodies of various shapes will be given for the cases of scalar, electromagnetic, and fermionic fiel...

A novel approach for calculating Casimir forces between periodically deformed objects is developed. This approach allows, for the first time, a rigorous non-perturbative treatment of the Casimir effect for disconnected objects beyond Casimir's original two-plate configuration. The approach takes into account the collective nature of fluctuation induced forces, going beyond the commonly used pairwise summation of two-body van der Waals forces. As an application of the method, ...

After reviewing some essential features of the Casimir effect and, specifically, of its regularization by zeta function and Hadamard methods, we consider the dynamical Casimir effect (or Fulling-Davis theory), where related regularization problems appear, with a view to an experimental verification of this theory. We finish with a discussion of the possible contribution of vacuum fluctuations to dark energy, in a Casimir like fashion, that might involve the dynamical version.

We reply to the comment arXiv:quant-ph/0702060 on our letter arXiv:quant-ph/0603120 [Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 100402 (2006)]

In this talk I review various developments in the past year concerning quantum vacuum energy, the Casimir effect. In particular, there has been continuing controversy surrounding the temperature correction to the Lifshitz formula for the Casimir force between real materials, be they metals or semiconductors. Consensus has emerged as to how Casimir energy accelerates in a weak gravitational field; quantum vacuum energy, including the divergent parts which renormalize the masse...

We present calculations of the quantum and thermal Casimir interaction between real mirrors in electromagnetic fields using the scattering approach. We begin with a pedagogical introduction of this approach in simple cases where the scattering is specular. We then discuss the more general case of stationary arbitrarily shaped mirrors and present in particular applications to two geometries of interest for experiments, that is corrugated plates and the plane-sphere geometry. T...

Moving mirrors are submitted to reaction forces by vacuum fields. The motional force is known to vanish for a single mirror uniformly accelerating in vacuum. We show that inertial forces (proportional to accelerations) arise in the presence of a second scatterer, exhibiting properties expected for a relative inertia: the mass corrections depend upon the distance between the mirrors, and each mirror experiences a force proportional to the acceleration of the other one. When th...