When the Casimir energy is not a sum of zero-point energies

• Autor(a) principal: De Albuquerque, Luiz C. [UNESP]
• Data de Publicação: 2002
• Outros Autores: Cavalcanti, R. M.
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UNESP
• Texto Completo: http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.65.045004; http://hdl.handle.net/11449/219275

We compute the leading radiative correction to the Casimir force between two parallel plates in the λΦ4 theory. Dirichlet and periodic boundary conditions are considered. A heuristic approach, in which the Casimir energy is computed as the sum of one-loop corrected zero-point energies, is shown to yield incorrect results, but we show how to amend it. The technique is then used in the case of periodic boundary conditions to construct a perturbative expansion which is free of infrared singularities in the massless limit. In this case we also compute the next-to-leading order radiative correction, which turns out to be proportional to λ3/2. © 2002 The American Physical Society.