Göttingen 2012 – scientific programme

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MP: Fachverband Theoretische und Mathematische Grundlagen der Physik

MP 8: Gravitation und Quantenfelder

MP 8.1: Talk

Wednesday, February 29, 2012, 09:30–09:55, ZHG 003

The Casimir effect in minimal length theories — •Antonia Micol Frassino¹ and Orlando Panella² — ¹Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies — ²INFN Università di Perugia

We start by a brief review of the Casimir effect. Then we study how this effect is sensible to the smaller structure of spacetime. To achieve this, we model spacetime granularity by the presence of a minimal length implemented through a generalized uncertainty principle. We find that the quantization of the electromagnetic field is affected by the minimal length: specifically, fields can be only expanded on a set of maximally localized states that regularize the UV region of the theory. In this context we compute the lowest order correction in the minimal length parameter to the Casimir energy. We find that the correction is still attractive and scales with the fifth power of the distance beetwen the plates. We make some considerations about the possibility of observing this effect. Future developments will be suggested.