Using boundary methods to compute the Casimir energy

F.C. LOMBARDO F.D. MAZZITELLI AND P.I. VILLAR

Norman, Oklahoma, USA

Workshop; Quantum fields under the influence of external conditions 2009; 2009

Universidad de Oklahoma

We discuss new approaches to compute numerically the Casimir interaction energy for waveguides of arbitrary section, based on the boundary methods traditionally used to compute eigenvalues of the 2D Helmholtz equation. These methods are combined with the Cauchy’s theorem in order to perform the sum over modes. As an illustration, we describe a point-matching technique to compute the vacuum energy for waveguides containing media with di