München 1997 – scientific programme

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MP: Theoretische und Mathematische Grundlagen der Physik

MP XIII: HV XIII

MP XIII.1: Invited Talk

Friday, March 21, 1997, 11:00–11:45, HS 118

Ground State Energy in General Background Configurations — •M. Bordag and K. Kirsten — Universität Leipzig, Institut für Theoretische Physik, Augustusplatz 10, 04109 Leipzig, (0341)9732427

The ground state energy resp. vacuum polarization and the Casimir effect have been well investigated for a large number of special background configurations. Some of these are homogeneous fields or spaces and boundary conditions with simple geometries like rectangular or spherical ones. In this talk we review the progress made during the past years for more general background configurations. Essential points are the use of the zetafunctional regularization and knowledge from the scattering theory combined with uniform asymptotic expansions. Special attention is payed to the interpretation of the renormalization and to the normalization conditions. Examples for the application of these techniques are the calculation of the ground state energy in the background of a spherically symmetric square well potential and for massive fields in a bag. Mathematical applications are the calculation of special heat kernel coefficients to high orders and of the functional determinant for fields in generalized cones.