2003/10/31 by H. Weigel, Weigel, H.
Physics and Astronomy · #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #Noncommutative and Quantum Gravity Theories #Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect #Quantum Physics (quant-ph) #hep-th #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.hep-th/0310301
Eight pages, (Rinton style included), Contribution to the proceedings of the QFEXT03 workshop, Norman,Oklahoma, September 2003
arxiv created 2003/10/31 · openalex publication_date 2003/10/31 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We study the vacuum polarization (Casimir) energy in renormalizable, continuum quantum field theory in the presence of a background field, designed to impose Dirichlet boundary conditions on the fluctuating quantum field. In two and three spatial dimensions the Casimir energy diverges as a background field becomes concentrated on the surface on which the Dirichlet boundary condition would eventually hold. This divergence does not affect the force between rigid bodies, but it does invalidate calculations of Casimir stresses based on idealized boundary conditions.