Boundary energy and boundary states in integrable quantum field theories

Abstract

We study the ground state energy of integrable $1+1$ quantum field theories with boundaries (the genuine Casimir effect). In the scalar case, this is done by introducing a new, ``R-channel TBA'', where the boundary is represented by a boundary state, and the thermodynamics involves evaluating scalar products of boundary states with all the states of the theory. In the non-scalar, sine-Gordon case, this is done by generalizing the method of Destri and De Vega. The two approaches are compared. Miscellaneous other results are obtained, in particular formulas for the overall normalization and scalar products of boundary states, exact partition functions for the critical Ising model in a boundary magnetic field, and also results for the energy, excited states and boundary S-matrix of $O(n)$ and minimal models.