How does Casimir energy fall? III. Inertial forces on vacuum energy

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that Casimir energy behaves as inertial mass under gravity and rotation, confirming its equivalence to conventional mass through calculations of gravitational and centripetal forces.

Contribution

The study provides new evidence that Casimir energy exhibits inertial properties, extending previous results to rotating systems and confirming its gravitational behavior.

Findings

Casimir energy falls like conventional mass in a gravitational field.

Centripetal force on a rotating Casimir apparatus is orientation-independent.

Casimir energy's inertial behavior is consistent with mass equivalence principles.

Abstract

We have recently demonstrated that Casimir energy due to parallel plates, including its divergent parts, falls like conventional mass in a weak gravitational field. The divergent parts were suitably interpreted as renormalizing the bare masses of the plates. Here we corroborate our result regarding the inertial nature of Casimir energy by calculating the centripetal force on a Casimir apparatus rotating with constant angular speed. We show that the centripetal force is independent of the orientation of the Casimir apparatus in a frame whose origin is at the center of inertia of the apparatus.