Casimir effect on the lattice: U(1) gauge theory in two spatial dimensions M. N. Chernodub,1, 2, 3 V. A. Goy,4, 2 and A. V. Molochkov2 1Laboratoire de Math´ematiques et Physique Th´eoriqueUMR 7350, Universit´ede Tours, 37200 France 2Soft Matter Physics Laboratory, Far Eastern Federal University, Sukhanova 8, Vladivostok, 690950, Russia 3Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Gent, Krijgslaan 281, S9, B-9000 Gent, Belgium 4School of Natural Sciences, Far Eastern Federal University, Sukhanova 8, Vladivostok, 690950, Russia (Dated: September 8, 2016) We propose a general numerical method to study the Casimir effect in lattice gauge theories. We illustrate the method by calculating the energy density of zero-point fluctuations around two parallel wires of finite static permittivity in Abelian gauge theory in two spatial dimensions. We discuss various subtle issues related to the lattice formulation of the problem and show how they can successfully be resolved. Finally, we calculate the Casimir potential between the wires of a fixed permittivity, extrapolate our results to the limit of ideally conducting wires and demonstrate excellent agreement with a known theoretical result. I. INTRODUCTION lattice discretization) described by spatially-anisotropic and space-dependent static permittivities "(x) and per- meabilities µ(x) at zero and finite temperature in theories The influence of the physical objects on zero-point with various gauge groups. (vacuum) fluctuations is generally known as the Casimir The structure of the paper is as follows. In Sect. II effect [1{3]. The simplest example of the Casimir effect is we review the implementation of the Casimir boundary a modification of the vacuum energy of electromagnetic conditions for ideal conductors and propose its natural field by closely-spaced and perfectly-conducting parallel counterpart in the lattice gauge theory. We also discuss plates which leads to attraction of the plates to each a simple lattice implementation of materials character- other. If the objects are made of real materials, then their ized by static permittivity " and permeability µ. Sec- intrinsic physical properties affect the energy of zero- tion III is devoted to discussion of the Casimir problem point fluctuations in accordance with the Lifshitz the- in (2+1) dimensional Abelian gauge theory. We discuss ory [4]. Generally, the Casimir forces depend on permit- geometrical setup, describe relevant observables, derive tivity, permeability, conductivity of the material which, the effect analytically in the continuum spacetime and in general, are complex functions of the electromagnetic rederive it again in the Euclidean lattice spacetime. The wave frequency. A calculation of the Casimir energy, in latter formula turns out to be crucial for precise compari- general, is quite involved. son { done in Section IV { of the results of our numerical Even in the case of perfect conductors the analytical simulations with the theoretical prediction in perfectly calculation of the Casimir forces may be a challenge if the conducting limit. In Sect. IV we calculate zero-point elec- objects are not flat. These forces may be either attractive tromagnetic fields around dielectric wires, study Casimir or repulsive depending on geometrical shape of the con- energy, make various scaling checks and discuss subtleties ductors. There are various numerical tools to compute of determination of Casimir energy in continuum based Casimir interactions [5] including worldline Monte-Carlo on the lattice results. Finally, we calculate numerically methods [6, 7]. the dependence of the Casimir energy on static permit- In our paper we would like to join investigation of tivity " of the wires. The last section is devoted to our the Casimir physics using Monte-Carlo methods of lat- conclusions. tice gauge theories that are usually applied to nonpertur- bative studies in particle physics. A similar philosophy arXiv:1609.02323v1 [hep-lat] 8 Sep 2016 albeit with different technical implementations has al- II. THE METHOD ready been successfully used to study the Casimir forces between ideal conductors in Refs. [8{10]. A. Casimir boundary conditions in continuum In order to illustrate our method we compute the Casimir interaction between two parallel wires in an 1. Abelian gauge theory in (3+1) dimensions Abelian gauge model in two spatial dimensions in ther- modynamic equilibrium. We calculate the zero-point en- The Casimir effect is best probed by perfectly con- ergy for the wires described by a finite static permittivity ducting metallic surfaces of fixed geometrical shapes. In (dielectric constant). We extrapolate our numerical re- (3+1) dimensions a perfectly conducting surface im- sults to the limit of ideal conductors and demonstrating poses the following (Casimir) boundary conditionsS on the feasibility of the method by confronting our findings electromagnetic field Aµ: with known analytical results. We notice that our ap- proach can be easily generalized to study the Casimir en- B (x) = 0 ; E (x) = 0 ; (1) ? ergy for materials of various shapes (consistent with the x k x 2S 2S 2 where B (x) is the magnetic field normal to the surface that the Casimir condition (8) is reduced to the single ? at the point x and E (x) is electric field which is tan- constraint E2(x) = 0 or to gential to the surface atk the point x. The ideal metallic F 02(x) = 0 ; (9) surface imposes three conditions on electromagnetic field as it restricts one magnetic component B and two elec- where x belongs to the world surface of the wire. Equa- ? tric components E . tion (9) implies that the component of the electric field k For a flat static surface perpendicular to the third axis tangential to the wire should vanish at each point of the x3, conditions (1) take the simple form: wire. E (x) = E (x) = B (x) = 0 ; x ; (2) 1 2 3 2 S B. Casimir boundaries in lattice gauge theory which can identically be rewritten in terms of the field- strength tensor 1. Lattice Abelian gauge theory: Action F = @ A @ A ; (3) µν µ ν − ν µ as follows: In order to set up a lattice reformulation of the Casimir boundary conditions (5) and (8) let us first consider a F 01(x) = F 02(x) = F 12(x) = 0 ; x : (4) simplest possible case given by a compact U(1) gauge 2 S model (compact electrodynamics) on the lattice. In general, the Casimir conditions (1) can also be The action of the compact electrodynamics is formu- rewritten in the Lorentz-invariant form, lated in D-dimensional Euclidean spacetime: µν X nν Fe (x) = 0 (in D=3+1) ; (5) S[θ] = β (1 cos θ ) ; (10) − P 1 P where nµ is a vector tangential to the world-volume of the metallic surface at the point x and the tilde means where β is the lattice coupling constant (to be defined the duality operation: below). The sum in Eq. (10) goes over all elementary plaquettes P of the lattice. Each plaquette P is defined µν 1 µναβ by the position of one of the corners of the plaquette Fe = Fαβ (in D=3+1) : (6) 2 x = (x1; : : : ; xD) and by the directions of two orthogonal vectors µ < ν in the plaquette plane, P = x; µν with For a flat static (x1; x2) surface the normal vector is di- µ, ν = 1;:::D. The plaquette angle θ isf constructedg rected along the third direction, nµ = δµ3 and the bound- P from the elementary link angles θ ( π; +π) which ary conditions for the gauge field (5) are indeed reduced x,µ 2 − to constraints (2) and (4). belong to the perimeter @P of the plaquette P : θ = θ + θ θ θ : (11) Px,µν x,µ x+^µ,ν − x+^ν,µ − x,ν 2. Abelian gauge theory in (2+1) dimensions The partition function of the model is as follows: Z S[θ] = θ e− ; (12) In 2+1 dimensions the Casimir effect is formulated as Z D an interaction between metallic wires in two dimensional spatial volume. The world-surface of a wire is a two- where dimensional surface as one dimension comes from the spa- Z Y Z π θ dθl ; (13) tial dimension of the wire and another dimension comes D ≡ π from the time coordinate. Moreover, in 2+1 dimensions l − the dual object to the field strength tensor (6) is a vector: is the integration measure over the lattice gauge field θl. The action (10) is invariant under the 2π shifts of the µ 1 µαβ Fe = Fαβ (in 2+1) : (7) plaquette variable, 2 θP θP + 2πn ; n Z : (14) Therefore boundary condition (5) reduces in (2 + 1) di- ! 2 mensions to the following constraint: Therefore the 2π-shifted values of the plaquette strength tensor are physically equivalent to each other indicating µ nµFe (x) = 0 (in 2+1) : (8) that the Abelian group is a compact manifold. The angular variable θxµ has a sense of a \latticized" For a straight static wire parallel to the x2 axis, the Abelian gauge field Aµ, θxµ = aAµ(x), where a is the normal vector nµ is directed along the x1 coordinate, so lattice spacing (i.e., the length of the elementary link of the lattice). In continuum limit a 0 the plaquette variable (11) reduces, for finite values! of the gauge field Aµ, to the field strength tensor (3) 1 A two-dimensional surface has a three-dimensional world-volume which include two spatial coordinates and one time coordinate. 2 θPx,µν = a Fµν (x) ; (15) 3 4 where higher O(a ) corrections are not shown. equivalent to the requirement cos θPx,µν = 1 at the cor- Substituting Eq. (15) into Eq. (10), expanding over a responding plaquettes hence Eq. (18). and keeping the leading term only, we get the action of The relations from Eq.