Effective action for delta potentials

• Verfasst von: Franchino-Viñas, Sebastián [VerfasserIn]
• Verfasst von: Mazzitelli, Francisco D. [VerfasserIn]
• Titel: Effective action for delta potentials
• Titelzusatz: spacetime-dependent inhomogeneities and Casimir self-energy
• Verf.angabe: S.A. Franchino-Viñas and F.D. Mazzitelli
• E-Jahr: 2021
• Jahr: 16 March 2021
• Umfang: 17 S.
• Titel Quelle: Enthalten in: Physical review
• Ort Quelle: Woodbury, NY : Inst., 2016
• Jahr Quelle: 2021
• Band/Heft Quelle: 103(2021), 6, Artikel-ID 065006, Seite 1-17
• ISSN Quelle: 2470-0029
• DOI: doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.103.065006
• Datenträger: Online-Ressource
• Sprache: eng
• K10plus-PPN: 1789462037

Abstract

We study the vacuum fluctuations of a quantum scalar field in the presence of a thin and inhomogeneous flat mirror, modeled with a delta potential. Using heat-kernel techniques, we evaluate the Euclidean effective action perturbatively in the inhomogeneities (nonperturbatively in the constant background). We show that the divergences can be absorbed into a local counterterm and that the remaining finite part is in general a nonlocal functional of the inhomogeneities, which we compute explicitly for massless fields in D=4 dimensions. For time-independent inhomogeneities, the effective action gives the Casimir self-energy for a partially transmitting mirror. For time-dependent inhomogeneities, the Wick-rotated effective action gives the probability of particle creation due to the dynamical Casimir effect.