Finite temperature Casimir effect in one-dimensional scalar field with double delta-function potentials

TL;DR

This paper studies the finite-temperature Casimir effect in a 1D scalar field with double delta potentials, comparing canonical quantization with Lifshitz theory, and finds canonical quantization provides a consistent thermodynamic description.

Contribution

It introduces a canonical quantization approach to analyze the thermal Casimir effect in a 1D scalar field with delta potentials, highlighting its thermodynamic consistency.

Findings

At long distances, the Casimir force decays as -T/(4a).

Canonical quantization yields positive, temperature-increasing entropy.

Lifshitz theory predicts a force twice as large as canonical quantization.

Abstract

We investigate the finite-temperature Casimir effect for a (1+1)-dimensional scalar field interacting with a pair of delta-function potentials. We employ the canonical quantization method to compute the Casimir force and entropy, contrasting the results with those from the standard Lifshitz theory. At zero temperature, both frameworks yield identical forces. For the finite-temperature case, we find that in the long-distance limit, the Casimir force decays asymptotically as $F_C(a,T)=-T/(4a)$, with the Lifshitz theory predicting a magnitude twice as large as that from canonical quantization. Crucially, the canonical quantization method yields a physically consistent entropy that remains positive and increases with temperature. These results demonstrate the robustness of the canonical quantization approach in providing a thermodynamically sound description of the thermal Casimir effect in this system.