2013/01/31 by ChunJun Cao, Moos van Caspel, Ariel Zhitnitsky +1
Physics and Astronomy · #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Noncommutative and Quantum Gravity Theories #Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect #hep-ph #hep-th #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.87.105012
published as Phys. Rev. D. 87 (2013) 105012 · a number of terminological comments added. matches the published version
openalex publication_date 2013/05/15 · arxiv created 2013/05/20 · arxiv updated 2013/05/21 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We study the topological Casimir effect, in which extra vacuum energy emerges as a result of the topological features of the theory, rather than due to the conventional fluctuations of the physical propagating degrees of freedom. We compute the corresponding topological term in quantum Maxwell theory defined on a compact manifold. Numerically, the topological effect is much smaller than the conventional Casimir effect. However, we argue that the topological Casimir effect is highly sensitive to an external magnetic field, which may help to discriminate it from the conventional Casimir effect. It is quite amazing that the external magnetic field plays the role of the \ensuremathθ state, similar to a \ensuremathθ vacuum in QCD, or \ensuremathθ=\ensuremathπ in topological insulators.