Casimir Effect for a Massless Spin-3/2 Field in Minkowski Spacetime

Liu, Wenbiao; Xiao, Kui; Zhang, Hongbao

doi:10.1088/0253-6102/48/3/015

Cited by 2 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…(37) the allowed values of k given in Eq. (26), and as in the spin-1 /2 case taking the continuum limit with respect to the k 1 and k 2 -directions, one obtains [17] E vac…”

Section: Spin-1mentioning

confidence: 87%

“…3. This means for example, that the approach adopted in [26] where periodic BCs were imposed on the spin-3 /2 field, is unphysical.…”

Section: B Generalised Physical Boundary Conditions For Massless Fiementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The statement of one or more boundary conditions governing how the considered field behaves at material surfaces. These can be mathematically convenient (examples include Dirichlet [23], Neumann [24], Robin [25] and periodic [26,27] BCs) or physically-motivated (those imposed by electromagnetism [4] or by the bag model [13] for example).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Casimir effect for fields with arbitrary spin

Stokes

Bennett

2015

Annals of Physics

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The Casimir force between two perfectly reflecting parallel plates is considered. In a recent paper we presented generalised physical boundary conditions describing perfectly reflecting parallel plates. These boundary conditions are applicable to a field possessing any spin, and include the well-known spin-1/2 and spin-1 boundary conditions as special cases. Here we use these general boundary conditions to show that the allowed values of energy-momentum turn out to be the same for any massless fermionic field and the same for any massless bosonic field. As a result one expects to obtain only two possible Casimir forces, one associated with fermions and the other with bosons. We explicitly verify that this is the case for the fields up to spin-2. A significant implication of our work is that periodic boundary conditions cannot be applied to a fermionic field confined between two parallel plates

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“…(37) the allowed values of k given in Eq. (26), and as in the spin-1 /2 case taking the continuum limit with respect to the k 1 and k 2 -directions, one obtains [17] E vac…”

Section: Spin-1mentioning

confidence: 87%

“…3. This means for example, that the approach adopted in [26] where periodic BCs were imposed on the spin-3 /2 field, is unphysical.…”

Section: B Generalised Physical Boundary Conditions For Massless Fiementioning

confidence: 99%

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The Casimir effect for fields with arbitrary spin

Stokes

Bennett

2015

Annals of Physics

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“…Answering these questions would significantly advance our understanding of the physics of confined higher-spin fields. For example, in [19] arbitrary BCs (periodic) are applied to the spin-3 2 field-no physical justification is attempted. Here we unify the BCs usually employed in the treatment of spin-1 2 and spin-1 fields near perfect reflectors, and then develop this unification in order to model the confinement of fields possessing arbitrary spin.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A generalized bag-like boundary condition for fields with arbitrary spin

Stokes

Bennett

2015

New J. Phys.

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Boundary conditions (BCs) for the Maxwell and Dirac fields at material surfaces are widely-used and physically well-motivated, but do not appear to have been generalized to deal with higher spin fields. As a result there is no clear prescription as to which BCs should be selected in order to obtain physically-relevant results pertaining to confined higher spin fields. This lack of understanding is significant given that boundary-dependent phenomena are ubiquitous across physics, a prominent example being the Casimir effect. Here, we use the two-spinor calculus formalism to present a unified treatment of BCs routinely employed in the treatment of spin-1 2 and spin-1 fields. We then use this unification to obtain a BC that can be applied to massless fields of any spin, including the spin-2 graviton, and its supersymmetric partner the spin-3 2 gravitino.The coupling of a quantized field to matter causes the spectrum of its vacuum fluctuations to change. The range of resulting phenomena includes what are variously known as Casimir forces, energies and pressures. The simple case of two perfectly reflecting, infinite, parallel plates, that impose boundary conditions (BCs) on the Maxwell field was investigated by Casimir in [1]. Casimir's seminal paper has since resulted in a wide range of extensions, generalizations and experimental confirmations over the last half-century or so [2][3][4][5][6][7]. This has led, for example, to new constraints on hypothetical Yukawa corrections to Newtonian gravity [8]. Casimir's relatively simple and intuitive calculation has provided an enormously fruitful link between real-world experiments and the abstract discipline of quantum field theory. In fact, boundary-dependent effects are often cited in standard quantum field theory textbooks as the primary justification for the reality of vacuum fluctuations. Such interpretations however, are not without controversy [9]. Boundary-dependent vacuum forces are not specific to electromagnetism, and are in fact a general feature of quantized fields. Here we provide a unified and physically well-motivated treatment of the effects that perfectly reflecting material boundaries have on any quantum field.A striking example of non-electromagnetic Casimir effects can be found in nuclear physics, wherein early attempts to model the nucleon without considering BCs at its surface ran into a variety of problems [10]. Many of these problems were solved by the introduction of the 'bag model' [11], which describes a nucleon as a collection of free massless quarks 2 confined to a region of space (the 'bag'), with a postulated BC that governs their behavior at the surface (see figure 1). This model, subject to sensible choices of a small number of free parameters, correctly predicts much of the physics of the nucleon [10]. The boundary-dependent vacuum contribution to the energy (the Casimir energy) has important consequences for the stability of the bag [12][13][14]. This further emphasizes the importance of using physically-motivated BCs. Another example of...

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Casimir Effect for a Massless Spin-3/2 Field in Minkowski Spacetime

Cited by 2 publications

References 52 publications

The Casimir effect for fields with arbitrary spin

The Casimir effect for fields with arbitrary spin

A generalized bag-like boundary condition for fields with arbitrary spin

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