https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-008-0698-z
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
Thermal Casimir effect in ideal metal rectangular boxes
1
Institute for Theoretical Physics, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany
2
North-West Technical University, St. Petersburg, Russia
3
Noncommercial Partnership “Scientific Instruments”, Moscow, Russia
* e-mail: Vladimir.Mostepanenko@itp.uni-leipzig.de
Received:
21
July
2008
Published online:
30
August
2008
The thermal Casimir effect in ideal metal rectangular boxes is considered using the method of zeta functional regularization. A renormalization procedure is suggested which provides the finite expression for the Casimir free energy in any restricted quantization volume. This expression satisfies the classical limit at high temperature and leads to zero thermal Casimir force for systems with infinite characteristic dimensions. In the case of two parallel ideal metal planes the results, as derived previously using thermal quantum field theory in Matsubara formulation and other methods, are reproduced starting from the expression obtained. It is shown that for rectangular boxes the temperature-dependent contribution to the electromagnetic Casimir force can be both positive and negative depending on side lengths. Numerical computations of the scalar and electromagnetic Casimir free energy and force are performed for cubes.
© Springer-Verlag , 2008
