50 research outputs found
Casimir energy of smooth compact surfaces
We discuss the formalism of Balian and Duplantier for the calculation of the
Casimir energy for an arbitrary smooth compact surface, and use it to give some
examples: a finite cylinder with hemispherical caps, the torus, ellipsoid of
revolution, a "cube" with rounded corners and edges, and a "drum" made of disks
and part of a torus. We propose a model function which approximately captures
the shape dependence of the Casimir energy.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, minor changes, published versio