Matching high and low temperature regimes of massive scalar fields

Abstract

We analyze the matching of high and low temperature expansions of the effective action of massive scalar fields confined between two infinite walls with different boundary conditions. One remarkable low temperature effect is the exponential decay of the vacuum energy with the separation of the walls and the fact that the rate of decay is half for the boundary conditions which involve a connection between the boundary conditions of the two walls. In particular, the rate for Dirichlet boundary conditions is double than that of periodic boundary conditions.