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Phys. Rev. D 74, 105017 (2006) [8 pages]

Electromagnetic Casimir energy with extra dimensions

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H. Alnes, F. Ravndal, and I. K. Wehus
Department of Physics, University of Oslo, N-0316 Oslo, Norway

K. Olaussen
Department of Physics, NTNU, N-7491 Trondheim, Norway

Received 1 September 2006; published 21 November 2006

We calculate the energy-momentum tensor due to electromagnetic vacuum fluctuations between two parallel hyperplanes in more than four dimensions, considering both metallic and MIT boundary conditions. Using the axial gauge, the problem can be mapped upon the corresponding problem with a massless, scalar field satisfying, respectively, Dirichlet or Neumann boundary conditions. The pressure between the plates is constant while the energy density is found to diverge at the boundaries when there are extra dimensions. This can be related to the fact that Maxwell theory is then no longer conformally invariant. A similar behavior is known for the scalar field where a constant energy density consistent with the pressure can be obtained by improving the energy-momentum tensor with the Huggins term. This is not possible for the Maxwell field. However, the change in the energy-momentum tensor with distance between boundaries is finite in all cases.

© 2006 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevD.74.105017
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevD.74.105017
PACS:
11.10.Kk, 03.70.+k, 12.20.Ds