Phys. Rev. D 76, 025004 (2007) [4 pages]How does Casimir energy fall?Received 12 February 2007; published 6 July 2007 Doubt continues to linger over the reality of quantum vacuum energy. There is some question whether fluctuating fields gravitate at all, or do so anomalously. Here we show that, for the simple case of parallel conducting plates, the associated Casimir energy gravitates just as required by the equivalence principle, and that therefore the inertial and gravitational masses of a system possessing Casimir energy Ec are both Ec/c2. This simple result disproves recent claims in the literature. We clarify some pitfalls in the calculation that can lead to spurious dependences on the coordinate system. © 2007 The American Physical Society URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevD.76.025004
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevD.76.025004
PACS:
03.70.+k, 03.65.Sq, 04.20.Cv, 04.25.Nx
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