Quantum vacuum effects from boundaries of designer potentials

TL;DR

This paper investigates how boundary conditions with non-uniform potentials in a cavity affect quantum vacuum energy, revealing persistent observable effects that do not diminish with increasing nontrivial regions, with implications for quantum vacuum tests.

Contribution

It introduces a method to compute vacuum energy in systems with spatially varying potentials, showing non-vanishing effects in large regions, which is a novel insight into quantum vacuum behavior.

Findings

Vacuum energy effects persist in large non-uniform potential regions.

Observable vacuum energy does not diminish as the nontrivial potential region grows.

Potential implications for experimental tests of quantum vacuum phenomena.

Abstract

Vacuum energy in quantum field theory, being the sum of zero-point energies of all field modes, is formally infinite but yet, after regularization or renormalization, can give rise to finite observable effects. One way of understanding how these effects arise is to compute the vacuum energy in an idealized system such as a large cavity divided into disjoint regions by pistons. In this paper, this type of calculation is carried out for situations where the potential affecting a field is not the same in all regions of the cavity. It is shown that the observable parts of the vacuum energy in such potentials do not fall off to zero as the region where the potential is nontrivial becomes large. This unusual behavior might be interesting for tests involving quantum vacuum effects and for studies on the relation between vacuum energy in quantum field theory and geometry.