The Casimir effect for pistons with transmittal boundary conditions

Abstract

This work focuses on the analysis of the Casimir effect for pistons subject to transmittal boundary conditions. In particular we consider, as piston configuration, a direct product manifold of the type $I\times N$ where $I$ is a closed interval of the real line and $N$ is a smooth compact Riemannian manifold. By utilizing the spectral zeta function regularization technique, we compute the Casimir energy of the system and the Casimir force acting on the piston. Explicit results for the force are provided when the manifold $N$ is a $d$-dimensional ball.