Divergence of Casimir stress in inhomogeneous media
Simpson, William M.R.; Horsley, S.A.R.; Leonhardt, Ulf
Date: 5 April 2013
Article
Journal
Physical Review A- Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
Publisher
American Physical Society
Publisher DOI
Abstract
We examine the local behavior of the regularized stress tensor commonly used in calculations of the Casimir force for a dielectric medium inhomogeneous in one direction. It is shown that the usual expression for the stress tensor is not finite anywhere within the medium, whatever the temporal dispersion or index profile, and that this ...
We examine the local behavior of the regularized stress tensor commonly used in calculations of the Casimir force for a dielectric medium inhomogeneous in one direction. It is shown that the usual expression for the stress tensor is not finite anywhere within the medium, whatever the temporal dispersion or index profile, and that this divergence is unlikely to be removed through a simple modification to the regularization procedure. Our analytic argument is illustrated numerically for a medium approximated as a series of homogeneous strips, as the width of these strips is taken to zero. The findings hold for all magnetodielectric media.
Physics and Astronomy
Faculty of Environment, Science and Economy
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