The Casimir effect as a candidate of dark energy

Abstract

It is known that the simply evaluated value of the zero point energy of quantum fields is extremely deviated from the observed value of dark energy density. In this paper, we consider whether the Casimir energy, which is the zero point energy brought from boundary conditions, can cause the accelerating expansion of the Universe by using proper renormalization method and introducing the fermions of finite temperature living in $3+n+1$ space-time. We show that the zero temperature Casimir energy and the finite temperature corrections can explain the current accelerated expansion of the Universe.