482 research outputs found
Surface Vacuum Energy in Cutoff Models: Pressure Anomaly and Distributional Gravitational Limit
Vacuum-energy calculations with ideal reflecting boundaries are plagued by
boundary divergences, which presumably correspond to real (but finite) physical
effects occurring near the boundary. Our working hypothesis is that the stress
tensor for idealized boundary conditions with some finite cutoff should be a
reasonable ad hoc model for the true situation. The theory will have a sensible
renormalized limit when the cutoff is taken away; this requires making sense of
the Einstein equation with a distributional source. Calculations with the
standard ultraviolet cutoff reveal an inconsistency between energy and pressure
similar to the one that arises in noncovariant regularizations of cosmological
vacuum energy. The problem disappears, however, if the cutoff is a spatial
point separation in a "neutral" direction parallel to the boundary. Here we
demonstrate these claims in detail, first for a single flat reflecting wall
intersected by a test boundary, then more rigorously for a region of finite
cross section surrounded by four reflecting walls. We also show how the
moment-expansion theorem can be applied to the distributional limits of the
source and the solution of the Einstein equation, resulting in a mathematically
consistent differential equation where cutoff-dependent coefficients have been
identified as renormalizations of properties of the boundary. A number of
issues surrounding the interpretation of these results are aired.Comment: 22 pages, 2 figures, 1 table; PACS 03.70.+k, 04.20.Cv, 11.10.G
Interacting Bosons at Finite Temperature: How Bogolubov Visited a Black Hole and Came Home Again
The structure of the thermal equilibrium state of a weakly interacting Bose
gas is of current interest. We calculate the density matrix of that state in
two ways. The most effective method, in terms of yielding a simple, explicit
answer, is to construct a generating function within the traditional framework
of quantum statistical mechanics. The alternative method, arguably more
interesting, is to construct the thermal state as a vector state in an
artificial system with twice as many degrees of freedom. It is well known that
this construction has an actual physical realization in the quantum
thermodynamics of black holes, where the added degrees of freedom correspond to
the second sheet of the Kruskal manifold and the thermal vector state is a
state of the Unruh or the Hartle-Hawking type. What is unusual about the
present work is that the Bogolubov transformation used to construct the thermal
state combines in a rather symmetrical way with Bogolubov's original
transformation of the same form, used to implement the interaction of the
nonideal gas in linear approximation. In addition to providing a density
matrix, the method makes it possible to calculate efficiently certain
expectation values directly in terms of the thermal vector state of the doubled
system.Comment: 25 pages, LaTeX. To appear in a special issue of Foundations of
Physics in honor of Jacob Bekenstei
The Dirichlet-to-Robin Transform
A simple transformation converts a solution of a partial differential
equation with a Dirichlet boundary condition to a function satisfying a Robin
(generalized Neumann) condition. In the simplest cases this observation enables
the exact construction of the Green functions for the wave, heat, and
Schrodinger problems with a Robin boundary condition. The resulting physical
picture is that the field can exchange energy with the boundary, and a delayed
reflection from the boundary results. In more general situations the method
allows at least approximate and local construction of the appropriate reflected
solutions, and hence a "classical path" analysis of the Green functions and the
associated spectral information. By this method we solve the wave equation on
an interval with one Robin and one Dirichlet endpoint, and thence derive
several variants of a Gutzwiller-type expansion for the density of eigenvalues.
The variants are consistent except for an interesting subtlety of
distributional convergence that affects only the neighborhood of zero in the
frequency variable.Comment: 31 pages, 5 figures; RevTe
Mathematical Aspects of Vacuum Energy on Quantum Graphs
We use quantum graphs as a model to study various mathematical aspects of the
vacuum energy, such as convergence of periodic path expansions, consistency
among different methods (trace formulae versus method of images) and the
possible connection with the underlying classical dynamics.
We derive an expansion for the vacuum energy in terms of periodic paths on
the graph and prove its convergence and smooth dependence on the bond lengths
of the graph. For an important special case of graphs with equal bond lengths,
we derive a simpler explicit formula.
The main results are derived using the trace formula. We also discuss an
alternative approach using the method of images and prove that the results are
consistent. This may have important consequences for other systems, since the
method of images, unlike the trace formula, includes a sum over special
``bounce paths''. We succeed in showing that in our model bounce paths do not
contribute to the vacuum energy. Finally, we discuss the proposed possible link
between the magnitude of the vacuum energy and the type (chaotic vs.
integrable) of the underlying classical dynamics. Within a random matrix model
we calculate the variance of the vacuum energy over several ensembles and find
evidence that the level repulsion leads to suppression of the vacuum energy.Comment: Fixed several typos, explain the use of random matrices in Section
Inappropriateness of the Rindler quantization
It is argued that the Rindler quantization is not a correct approach to study
the effects of acceleration on quantum fields. First, the "particle"-detector
approach based on the Minkowski quantization is not equivalent to the approach
based on the Rindler quantization. Second, the event horizon, which plays the
essential role in the Rindler quantization, cannot play any physical role for a
local noninertial observer.Comment: 3 pages, accepted for publication in Mod. Phys. Lett.
Vacuum Quantum Effects for Parallel Plates Moving by Uniform Acceleration in Static de Sitter Space
The Casimir forces on two parallel plates moving by uniform proper
acceleration in static de Sitter background due to conformally coupled massless
scalar field satisfying Dirichlet boundary conditions on the plates is
investigated. Static de Sitter space is conformally related to the Rindler
space, as a result we can obtain vacuum expectation values of energy-momentum
tensor for conformally invariant field in static de Sitter space from the
corresponding Rindler counterpart by the conformal transformation.Comment: 10 pages, no figures, accepted for publication in Int. J. Mod. Phys.
Dynamics and symmetries of a field partitioned by an accelerated frame
The canonical evolution and symmetry generators are exhibited for a
Klein-Gordon (K-G) system which has been partitioned by an accelerated
coordinate frame into a pair of subsystems. This partitioning of the K-G system
is conveyed to the canonical generators by the eigenfunction property of the
Minkowski Bessel (M-B) modes. In terms of the M-B degrees of freedom, which are
unitarily related to those of the Minkowski plane waves, a near complete
diagonalization of these generators can be realized.Comment: 14 pages, PlainTex. Related papers on accelerated frames available at
http://www.math.ohio-state.edu/~gerlac
Systematics of the Relationship between Vacuum Energy Calculations and Heat Kernel Coefficients
Casimir energy is a nonlocal effect; its magnitude cannot be deduced from
heat kernel expansions, even those including the integrated boundary terms. On
the other hand, it is known that the divergent terms in the regularized (but
not yet renormalized) total vacuum energy are associated with the heat kernel
coefficients. Here a recent study of the relations among the eigenvalue
density, the heat kernel, and the integral kernel of the operator
is exploited to characterize this association completely.
Various previously isolated observations about the structure of the regularized
energy emerge naturally. For over 20 years controversies have persisted
stemming from the fact that certain (presumably physically meaningful) terms in
the renormalized vacuum energy density in the interior of a cavity become
singular at the boundary and correlate to certain divergent terms in the
regularized total energy. The point of view of the present paper promises to
help resolve these issues.Comment: 19 pages, RevTeX; Discussion section rewritten in response to
referees' comments, references added, minor typos correcte
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