329 research outputs found
The Stefan-Boltzmann law in a small box and the pressure deficit in hot SU(N) lattice gauge theory
The blackbody radiation in a box L^3 with periodic boundary conditions in
thermal equilibrium at a temperature T is affected by finite-size effects.
These bring about modifications of the thermodynamic functions which can be
expressed in a closed form in terms of the dimensionless parameter LT. For
instance, when LT~4 - corresponding to the value where the most reliable SU(N)
gauge lattice simulations have been performed above the deconfining temperature
T_c - the deviation of the free energy density from its thermodynamic limit is
about 5%. This may account for almost half of the pressure deficit observed in
lattice simulations at T~ 4 T_c.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures v2:a side remark on the final result and
references adde
The Bright Side of Dark Matter
We show that it is not possible in the absence of dark matter to construct a
four-dimensional metric that explains galactic observations. In particular, by
working with an effective potential it is shown that a metric which is
constructed to fit flat rotation curves in spiral galaxies leads to the wrong
sign for the bending of light i.e. repulsion instead of attraction. Hence,
without dark matter the motion of particles on galactic scales cannot be
explained in terms of geodesic motion on a four- dimensional metric. This
reveals a new bright side to dark matter: it is indispensable if we wish to
retain the cherished equivalence principle.Comment: 7 pages, latex, no figures. Received an honorable mention in the 1999
Gravity research Foundation Essay Competition. Submitted to Phys. Rev. Let
Casimir interaction: pistons and cavity
The energy of a perfectly conducting rectangular cavity is studied by making
use of pistons' interactions. The exact solution for a 3D perfectly conducting
piston with an arbitrary cross section is being discussed.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, latex2
Finite temperature Casimir effect for massive scalar field in spacetime with extra dimensions
We compute the finite temperature Casimir energy for massive scalar field
with general curvature coupling subject to Dirichlet or Neumann boundary
conditions on the walls of a closed cylinder with arbitrary cross section,
located in a background spacetime of the form ,
where is the -dimensional Minkowski spacetime and
is an -dimensional internal manifold. The Casimir energy is
regularized using the criteria that it should vanish in the infinite mass
limit. The Casimir force acting on a piston moving freely inside the closed
cylinder is derived and it is shown that it is independent of the
regularization procedure. By letting one of the chambers of the cylinder
divided by the piston to be infinitely long, we obtain the Casimir force acting
on two parallel plates embedded in the cylinder. It is shown that if both the
plates assume Dirichlet or Neumann boundary conditions, the strength of the
Casimir force is reduced by the increase in mass. Under certain conditions, the
passage from massless to massive will change the nature of the force from long
range to short range. Other properties of the Casimir force such as its sign,
its behavior at low and high temperature, and its behavior at small and large
plate separations, are found to be similar to the massless case. Explicit exact
formulas and asymptotic behaviors of the Casimir force at different limits are
derived. The Casimir force when one plate assumes Dirichlet boundary condition
and one plate assumes Neumann boundary condition is also derived and shown to
be repulsive.Comment: 28 pages, 4 figure
Finite Temperature Casimir Effect and Dispersion in the Presence of Compactified Extra Dimensions
Finite temperature Casimir theory of the Dirichlet scalar field is developed,
assuming that there is a conventional Casimir setup in physical space with two
infinitely large plates separated by a gap R and in addition an arbitrary
number q of extra compacified dimensions. As a generalization of earlier
theory, we assume in the first part of the paper that there is a scalar
'refractive index' N filling the whole of the physical space region. After
presenting general expressions for free energy and Casimir forces we focus on
the low temperature case, as this is of main physical interest both for force
measurements and also for issues related to entropy and the Nernst theorem.
Thereafter, in the second part we analyze dispersive properties, assuming for
simplicity q=1, by taking into account dispersion associated with the first
Matsubara frequency only. The medium-induced contribution to the free energy,
and pressure, is calculated at low temperatures.Comment: 25 pages, one figure. Minor changes in the discussion. Version to
appear in Physica Script
Casimir force on interacting Bose-Einstein condensate
We have presented an analytic theory for the Casimir force on a Bose-Einstein
condensate (BEC) which is confined between two parallel plates. We have
considered Dirichlet boundary conditions for the condensate wave function as
well as for the phonon field. We have shown that, the condensate wave function
(which obeys the Gross-Pitaevskii equation) is responsible for the mean field
part of Casimir force, which usually dominates over the quantum (fluctuations)
part of the Casimir force.Comment: Accepted in Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular and Optical
Physic
Finite Temperature Casimir Effect in Randall-Sundrum Models
The finite temperature Casimir effect for a scalar field in the bulk region
of the two Randall-Sundrum models, RSI and RSII, is studied. We calculate the
Casimir energy and the Casimir force for two parallel plates with separation
on the visible brane in the RSI model. High-temperature and low-temperature
cases are covered. Attractiveness versus repulsiveness of the temperature
correction to the force is discussed in the typical special cases of
Dirichlet-Dirichlet, Neumann-Neumann, and Dirichlet-Neumann boundary conditions
at low temperature. The Abel-Plana summation formula is made use of, as this
turns out to be most convenient. Some comments are made on the related
contemporary literature.Comment: 33 pages latex, 2 figures. Some changes in the discussion. To appear
in New J. Phy
Multidimensional cut-off technique, odd-dimensional Epstein zeta functions and Casimir energy of massless scalar fields
Quantum fluctuations of massless scalar fields represented by quantum
fluctuations of the quasiparticle vacuum in a zero-temperature dilute
Bose-Einstein condensate may well provide the first experimental arena for
measuring the Casimir force of a field other than the electromagnetic field.
This would constitute a real Casimir force measurement - due to quantum
fluctuations - in contrast to thermal fluctuation effects. We develop a
multidimensional cut-off technique for calculating the Casimir energy of
massless scalar fields in -dimensional rectangular spaces with large
dimensions and dimensions of length and generalize the technique to
arbitrary lengths. We explicitly evaluate the multidimensional remainder and
express it in a form that converges exponentially fast. Together with the
compact analytical formulas we derive, the numerical results are exact and easy
to obtain. Most importantly, we show that the division between analytical and
remainder is not arbitrary but has a natural physical interpretation. The
analytical part can be viewed as the sum of individual parallel plate energies
and the remainder as an interaction energy. In a separate procedure, via
results from number theory, we express some odd-dimensional homogeneous Epstein
zeta functions as products of one-dimensional sums plus a tiny remainder and
calculate from them the Casimir energy via zeta function regularization.Comment: 42 pages, 3 figures. v.2: typos corrected to match published versio
Casimir Effect in closed spaces
As it is well known the topology of space is not totally determined by
Einstein's equations. It is considered a massless scalar quantum field in a
static Euclidean space of dimension 3. The expectation value for the energy
density in all compact orientable Euclidean 3-spaces are obtained in this work
as a finite summation of Epstein type zeta functions. The Casimir energy
density for these particular manifolds is independent of the type of coupling
with curvature. A numerical plot of the result inside each Dirichlet region is
obtained.Comment: Version accepted for publication. The most general coupling with
curvature is chose
Implications of Cosmic Repulsion for Gravitational Theory
In this paper we present a general, model independent analysis of a recently
detected apparent cosmic repulsion, and discuss its potential implications for
gravitational theory. In particular, we show that a negatively spatially curved
universe acts like a diverging refractive medium, to thus naturally cause
galaxies to accelerate away from each other. Additionally, we show that it is
possible for a cosmic acceleration to only be temporary, with some accelerating
universes actually being able to subsequently recontract.Comment: RevTeX, 13 page
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