Casimir Effect and Global Theory of Boundary Conditions.pdfVIP

Casimir Effect and Global Theory of Boundary Conditions ´ 6 M. Asorey, D. Garc´ıa Alvarez, J. M. Mu˜noz-Casta˜neda 0 Departamento de F´ısica Te´orica. Facultad de Ciencias. Universidad de Zaragoza, 0 2 50009 Zaragoza.Spain r p Abstract. A The consistency of quantum field theories defined on domains with external borders 2 imposes very restrictive constraints on the type of boundary conditions that the fields 1 can satisfy. We analyse the global geometrical and topological properties of the space of all possible boundary conditions for scalar quantum field theories. The variation of 1 v the Casimir energy under the change of boundary conditions reveals the existence 9 of singularities generically associated to boundary conditions which either involve 8 topology changes of the underlying physical space or edge states with unbounded 0 4 below classical energy. The effect can be understood in terms of a new type of Maslov 0 index associated to the non-trivial topology of the space of boundary conditions. We 6 also analyze the global aspects of the renormalization group flow, T-duality and the 0 / conformal invariance of the corresponding fixed points. h t - p e h : v i X r a Casimir Effect and Global Theory of Boundary Conditions 2 1. Introduction The role of boundaries in Quantum Physics has being boosted in the last decade until becoming a basic element of fundamental physics. The classical Weyl’s dream of hearing the shape