Casimir Domains on a sphere

Abstract

A Casimir--type analysis of the effect of dividing the two--sphere by several lines of latitude is done for conformally invariant Dirichlet and Neumann scalars and for spinors. An effective action combination is shown to have minima for symmetrical arrangements of the circles. For a domain of two caps and a slice, the Dirichlet slice expands to fill the whole sphere while the Neumann one adjusts to an angular separation of 57.92 degrees. The fermion expression is written in terms of the Weber class function, $\gf$, and a connection is noted with an earlier calculation of twisted scalar effective actions on the tetrahedron.