Casimir energy between two parallel plates and projective representation of Poincar\'e group

Abstract

The Casimir effect is a physical manifestation of zero point energy of quantum vacuum. In a relativistic quantum field theory, Poincar\'e symmetry of the theory seems, at first sight, to imply that non-zero vacuum energy is inconsistent with translational invariance of the vacuum. In the setting of two uniform boundary plates at rest, quantum fields outside the plates have (1+2)-dimensional Poincar\'e symmtry. Taking a massless scalar field as an example, we have examined the consistency between the Poincar\'e symmetry and the existence of the vacuum enegy. We note that, in quantum theory, symmetries are represented projectively in general and show that the Casimir energy is connected to central charges appearing in the algebra of generators in the projective representations.