Electrons for Detection of Casimir Photons

TL;DR

This paper proposes a method to detect dynamical Casimir photons by measuring changes in electron kinetic energy as they pass through a vibrating cavity, with temperature effects enhancing detectability.

Contribution

It introduces a novel detection scheme for Casimir photons using electron interactions and analyzes how temperature increases can improve detection sensitivity.

Findings

Detection of Casimir photons via electron energy measurements is feasible.

Finite temperature effects significantly enhance the detection signal.

The method provides a practical approach for observing the dynamical Casimir effect.

Abstract

We propose a method for the detection of a dynamical Casimir effect. Assuming that the Casimir photons are being generated in an electromagnetic cavity with a vibrating wall (dynamical Casimir effect), we consider electrons passing through the cavity to be interacting with the intracavity field. We show that the dynamical Casimir effect can be observed via the measurement of the change in the average or in the variance of the electron kinetic energy. We point out that the enhancement of the effect due to finite temperatures makes it easier to detect the Casimir photons.