The perfect magnetic conductor (PMC) Casimir piston in d+1 dimensions

Perfect magnetic conductor (PMC) boundary conditions are dual to the more familiar perfect electric conductor (PEC) conditions and can be viewed as the electromagnetic analog of the boundary conditions in the bag model for hadrons in QCD. Recent advances and requirements in communication technologies have attracted great interest in PMC's and Casimir experiments involving structures that approximate PMC's may be carried out in the not too distant future. In this paper, we make a study of the zero-temperature PMC Casimir piston in $d+1$ dimensions. The PMC Casimir energy is explicitly evaluated by summing over $p+1$-dimensional Dirichlet energies where p ranges from 2 to $d$ inclusively. We derive two exact $d$-dimensional expressions for the Casimir force on the piston and find that the force is negative (attractive) in all dimensions. Both expressions are applied to the case of 2+1 and 3+1 dimensions. A spin-off from our work is a contribution to the PEC literature: we obtain a useful alternative expression for the PEC Casimir piston in 3+1 dimensions and also evaluate the Casimir force per unit area on an infinite strip, a geometry of experimental interest.Comment: 18 pages, 1 figure, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Spectral functions and their applications

We give an introduction to the heat kernel technique and zeta function. Two applications are considered. First we derive the high temperature asymptotics of the free energy for boson fields in terms of the heat kernel expansion and zeta function. Another application is chiral anomaly for local (MIT bag) boundary conditions.Comment: 11 pages, Latex2

Casimir energy of a dilute dispersive dielectric ball: realistic microscopic model

The Casimir energy of a dilute homogeneous nonmagnetic dielectric ball at zero temperature is derived analytically within a microscopic realistic model of dielectrics for an arbitrary physically possible frequency dispersion of dielectric permittivity. Divergences are absent in calculations, a minimum interatomic distance is a physical cut-off. Casimir surface force is proved to be attractive. A physical definition of the Casimir energy is discussed.Comment: Latex 2e, 4 pages, 1 figure, to appear in Int. J. Mod. Phys. A [a talk given at the Fifth Leipzig Workshop on Quantum Field Theory under the Influence of External Conditions, September 10-14, 2001

Casimir energy of dielectric systems

A new formula for the Casimir energy of a dispersive dilute dielectric ball is discussed. The formula for the Casimir energy of a polarizable particle situated in a perfectly conducting wedge-shaped cavity is derived by a path-integral coordinate space method in quantum field theory.Comment: Latex 2e, 4 pages, no figures, a talk given at the International Meeting "Quantum Gravity and Spectral Geometry" (Naples, Italy, July 2-7, 2001