Casimir effect in kinetic theory

Abstract

We study Casimir effect in equilibrium and non-equilibrium photon gas in the frame of quantum kinetic theory for $U(1)$ gauge field. We derive first the transport, constraint and gauge fixing equations for the photon number distribution from Maxwell's equations, and then calculate the energy variation and Casimir force for a finite system by considering boundary condition on the surface of the system. The Casimir force in vacuum is suppressed by the thermal motion of photons in equilibrium state, when considering two adiabatic plates. In non-equilibrium state, the photon induced Casimir force oscillates and decays with time and finally disappears.