Casimir Energy for a Spherical Cavity in a Dielectric: Toward a Model for Sonoluminescence?

Abstract

In the final few years of his life, Julian Schwinger proposed that the ``dynamical Casimir effect'' might provide the driving force behind the puzzling phenomenon of sonoluminescence. Motivated by that exciting suggestion, I have computed the static Casimir energy of a spherical cavity in an otherwise uniform material with dielectric constant $\epsilon$ and permeability $\mu$. As expected the result is divergent; yet a plausible finite answer is extracted, in the leading uniform asymptotic approximation. That result gives far too small an energy to account for the large burst of photons seen in sonoluminescence. If the divergent result is retained (which is different from that guessed by Schwinger), it is of the wrong sign to drive the effect. Dispersion does not resolve this contradiction. However, dynamical effects are not yet included.

10 pages, LaTeX2e, Invited Talk at the Third Workshop on Quantum Field Theory Under the Influence of External Conditions, Leipzig, September 18--22, 1995

References in corpus (1)

• Casimir effect for a $D$-dimensional sphere

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Sonoluminescence as a QED vacuum effect. I: The Physical Scenario
• Sonoluminescence as a QED vacuum effect: Probing Schwinger's proposal
• Schwinger's Dynamical Casimir Effect: Bulk Energy Contribution
• Casimir effect in dielectrics: Bulk Energy Contribution
• Casimir effect in dielectrics: Surface area contribution
• Particle creation in an oscillating spherical cavity
• Lorentz violating scalar Casimir effect for a $D$-dimensional sphere
• Van der Waals Anomaly
• Gamma-Ray Burst Phenomenon as Collapse of QED Magnetized Vacuum Bubble: Analogy with Sonoluminescence