Year: 1991
Type: article
Abstract: The Casimir force can be understood as resulting from the radiation pressure exerted by the vacuum fluctuations reflected by boundaries. We extend this local formulation to the case of partially transmitting boundaries by introducing reflectivity and transmittivity coefficients obeying conditions of unitarity, causality and high frequency transparency. We show that the divergences associated with the infiniteness of the vacuum energy do not appear in this approach. We give explicit expressions for the Casimir force which hold for any frequency dependent scattering and any temperature. The corresponding expressions for the Casimir energy are interpreted in terms of phase shifts. The known results are recovered at the limit of a perfect reflection.
Source: Journal de Physique I
DOI: 10.1051/jp1:1991216
Authors: Marc Thierry Jaekel, Serge Reynaud
Language: English
Subfield: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2126250803