Cosmological uses of Casimir energy
Abstract
Description
A precise zeta-function calculation shows that the contribution of the vacuum energy to the observed value of the cosmological constant can possibly have the desired order of magnitude albeit the sign strongly depends on the topology of the universe. The non-renormalizable, infinite contributions which have been recently shown to occur when one physically imposes boundary conditions on quantum fields (Casimir calculations) are considered. It is shown that using a Hadamard regularization in addition to the zeta method, the ordinary, finite results in the literature are exactly recovered.
8 pages, invited contribution to the 6th Workshop on Quantum Field Theory under the Influence of External Conditions (QFEXT03), Norman, Oklahoma, September 15-19, 2003
8 pages, invited contribution to the 6th Workshop on Quantum Field Theory under the Influence of External Conditions (QFEXT03), Norman, Oklahoma, September 15-19, 2003