26 Mar 2010; Mat-Nat Faculty (UiTø), seminar room 208 B, Breivang. Friday 14:15-16:00.

Per Jakobsen

"On the calculation of Casimir stress on dielectric boundaries for a 2D neutral massless scalar field"

In the hierarchy of free quantum fields the neutral massless scalar field is the simplest one. Few natural entities are actually described by this kind of field, but it is a well known theoretical device for studying more complicated quantum fields.

In this lecture I will show how dielectric boundaries deform the vacuum state of the field and lead to surface stress on the boundaries, and I will derive a regularized set of integral equations that can be used for the numerical calculation of these stresses. I will also illustrate the usual approach to the calculation of Casimir forces by an explicit derivation of the Lifschitz formulas for case of dielectric half spaces.