Casimir Effect - Effects

Effects

Casimir's observation was that the second-quantized quantum electromagnetic field, in the presence of bulk bodies such as metals or dielectrics, must obey the same boundary conditions that the classical electromagnetic field must obey. In particular, this affects the calculation of the vacuum energy in the presence of a conductor or dielectric.

Consider, for example, the calculation of the vacuum expectation value of the electromagnetic field inside a metal cavity, such as, for example, a radar cavity or a microwave waveguide. In this case, the correct way to find the zero point energy of the field is to sum the energies of the standing waves of the cavity. To each and every possible standing wave corresponds an energy; say the energy of the nth standing wave is . The vacuum expectation value of the energy of the electromagnetic field in the cavity is then

with the sum running over all possible values of n enumerating the standing waves. The factor of 1/2 corresponds to the fact that the zero-point energies are being summed (it is the same 1/2 as appears in the equation ). Written in this way, this sum is clearly divergent; however, it can be used to create finite expressions.

In particular, one may ask how the zero point energy depends on the shape s of the cavity. Each energy level depends on the shape, and so one should write for the energy level, and for the vacuum expectation value. At this point comes an important observation: the force at point p on the wall of the cavity is equal to the change in the vacuum energy if the shape s of the wall is perturbed a little bit, say by, at point p. That is, one has

This value is finite in many practical calculations.

Attraction between the plates can be easily understood by focusing on the 1-dimensional situation. Suppose that a moveable conductive plate is positioned at a short distance a from one of two widely separated plates (distance L apart). With a << L, the states within the slot of width a are highly constrained so that the energy E of any one mode is widely separated from that of the next. This is not the case in open region L, where there is a large number (about L/a) of states with energy evenly spaced between E and the next mode in the narrow slot---in other words, all slightly larger than E. Now on shortening a by da (< 0), the mode in the slot shrinks in wavelength and therefore increases in energy proportional to -da/a, whereas all the outside L/a states lengthen and correspondingly lower energy proportional to da/L (note the denominator). The net change is slightly negative, because all the L/a modes' energies are slightly larger than the single mode in the slot.