Physical Aspects of the Non Equilibrium Casimir Effect

ADRIAN E. RUBIO LOPEZ; FERNANDO C. LOMBARDO

Bad Honnef

Seminario; WE-Heraeus-Seminar: Heat transfer and heat conduction on the nanoscale; 2016

Wilhelm and Else Heraeus Stiftung

In this talk I will show how to set the theoretical framework for the quantization of fields interacting with material boundaries at non-equilibrium scenarios. For this purpose, we implement the closed time path (CTP) formalism in a open quantum system framework. We show the procedure for scalar and EM fields. This allow us to study the time evolution for the interaction between between a quantum field and real materials, modeled as a composite environment consisting in quantum polarization degrees of freedom in each point of space, at arbitrary temperatures, connected to thermal baths. We solve the full dynamical problem from initial conditions. Therefore, setting the basis for a field quantization, we look at the long-time limit and deduce the steady state dynamics. We show that, depending on the material boundaries configuration, different contributions coming from different parts of the total system are present in the steady state. They depend of course on the material bodies but also on its size, allowing the.appearance (or not, depending the situation) of a separated contribution entirely related to the field initial state and its dissipative dynamics, which is very promising for tailoring dispersión effects at the nanoscale. Moreover, in the context of the Casimir physics, we also demonstrate the extension of the Lifshitz's formula for non-equilibrium situations from a first principle quantum approach.