No Arabic abstract
We investigate the vacuum polarization and the Casimir energy of a Dirac field coupled to a scalar potential in one spatial dimension. Both of these effects have a common cause which is the distortion of the spectrum due to the coupling with the background field. Choosing the potential to be a symmetrical square-well, the problem becomes exactly solvable and we can find the whole spectrum of the system, analytically. We show that the total number of states and the total density remain unchanged as compared with the free case, as one expects. Furthermore, since the positive- and negative-energy eigenstates of the fermion are fermion-number conjugates of each other and there is no zero-energy bound state, the total density and the total number of negative and positive states remain unchanged, separately. Therefore, the vacuum polarization in this model is zero for any choice of the parameters of the potential. It is important to note that although the vacuum polarization is zero due to the symmetries of the model, the Casimir energy of the system is not zero in general. In the graph of the Casimir energy as a function of the depth of the well there is a maximum approximately when the bound energy levels change direction and move back towards their continuum of origin. The Casimir energy for a fixed value of the depth is a linear function of the width and is always positive. Moreover, the Casimir energy density (the energy density of all the negative-energy states) and the energy density of all the positive-energy states are exactly the mirror images of each other. Finally, computing the total energy of a valence fermion present in the lowest fermionic bound state, taking into account the Casimir energy, we find that the lowest bound state is almost always unstable for the scalar potential.
Scattering methods make it possible to compute the effects of renormalized quantum fluctuations on classical field configurations. As a classic example of a topologically nontrivial classical solution, the Abrikosov-Nielsen-Olesen vortex in U(1) Higgs-gauge theory provides an ideal case in which to apply these methods. While physically measurable gauge-invariant quantities are always well-behaved, the topological properties of this solution give rise to singularities in gauge-variant quantities used in the scattering problem. In this paper we show how modifications of the standard scattering approach are necessary to maintain gauge invariance within a tractable calculation. We apply this technique to the vortex energy calculation in a simplified model, and show that to obtain accurate results requires an unexpectedly extensive numerical calculation, beyond what has been used in previous work.
We evaluate the vacuum polarization tensor (VPT) for a massless Dirac field in 1+1 and 3+1 dimensions, in the presence of a particular kind of defect, which in a special limit imposes bag boundary conditions. We also show that the chiral anomaly in the presence of such a defect is the same as when no defects are present, both in 1+1 and 3+1 dimensions. This implies that the induced vacuum current in 1+1 dimensions due to the lowest order VPT is exact.
Complete set of modes and the Hadamard function are constructed for a scalar field inside and outside a sphere in (D+1)-dimensional de Sitter spacetime foliated by negative constant curvature spaces. We assume that the field obeys Robin boundary condition on the sphere. The contributions in the Hadamard function induced by the sphere are explicitly separated and the vacuum expectation values (VEVs) of the field squared and energy-momentum tensor are investigated for the hyperbolic vacuum. In the flat spacetime limit the latter is reduced to the conformal vacuum in the Milne universe and is different from the maximally symmetric Bunch-Davies vacuum state. The vacuum energy-momentum tensor has a nonzero off-diagonal component that describes the energy flux in the radial direction. The latter is a purely sphere-induced effect and is absent in the boundary-free geometry. Depending on the constant in Robin boundary condition and also on the radial coordinate, the energy flux can be directed either from the sphere or towards the sphere. At early stages of the cosmological expansion the effects of the spacetime curvature on the sphere-induced VEVs are weak and the leading terms in the corresponding expansions coincide with those for a sphere in the Milne universe. The influence of the gravitational field is essential at late stages of the expansion. Depending on the field mass and the curvature coupling parameter, the decay of the sphere-induced VEVs, as functions of the time coordinate, is monotonic or damping oscillatory. At large distances from the sphere the fall-off of the sphere-induced VEVs, as functions of the geodesic distance, is exponential for both massless and massive fields.
A Lorentz symmetry violation aether-type theoretical model is considered to investigate the Casimir effect and the generation of topological mass associated with a self-interacting massive scalar fields obeying Dirichlet, Newman and mixed boundary conditions on two large and parallel plates. By adopting the path integral approach we found the effective potential at one- and two-loop corrections which provides both the energy density and topological mass when taken in the ground state of the scalar field. We then analyse how these quantities are affected by the Lorentz symmetry violation and compare the results with previous ones found in literature.
In this paper, we investigate the thermal effect on the Casimir energy associated with a massive scalar quantum field confined between two large parallel plates in a CPT-even, aether-like Lorentz-breaking scalar field theory. In order to do that we consider a nonzero chemical potential for the scalar field assumed to be in thermal equilibrium at some finite temperature. The calculations of the energies are developed by using the Abel-Plana summation formula, and the corresponding results are analyzed in several asymptotic regimes of the parameters of the system, like mass, separations between the plates and temperature.