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Center for Nonlinear Studies |
The development of new, general methods for the computation of Casimir potentials in arbitrary geometries and for arbitrary material properties remains a difficult problem. I will review our recent work on the world-line method, previously developed for scalar fields coupled to background potentials. This is a path-integral Monte-Carlo method for computing vacuum- and thermal-state energies of the field. Our work focuses on the generalization of this method to electromagnetism. I will review our recent results in considering scalar electromagnetic fields coupled to dielectrics, where we are able to reproduce a number of classic Casimir-potential results within a general framework. I will also briefly review the path towards a generalization to a full vector-electromagnetism formalism.
Host: Sebastian Deffner