The covariant electromagnetic Casimir effect for real conducting spherical shells

Abstract

Using the covariant electromagnetic Casimir effect (previously introduced for real conducting cylindrical shells [1]), the Casimir force experienced by a spherical shell, under Dirichlet boundary condition, is calculated. The renormalization procedure is based on the plasma cut-off frequency for real conductors. The real case of a gold (silver) sphere is considered and the corresponding electromagnetic Casimir force is computed. In the covariant approach, there isn't any decomposition of fields to TE and TM modes; thus, we do not need to consider the Neumann boundary condition in parallel to the Dirichlet problem and then add their corresponding results.