Casimir energy for spinor fields with $\delta$-shell potentials

Abstract

This work analyzes the Casimir energy of a massive spinor field propagating in flat space endowed with a spherically symmetric $\delta$-function potential. By utilizing the spectral zeta function regularization method, the Casimir energy is evaluated after performing a suitable analytic continuation. Explicit numerical results are provided for specific cases in which the Casimir energy is unambiguously defined. The results described in this work represent a generalization of the MIT bag model for spinor fields.