Physics – High Energy Physics – High Energy Physics - Theory
Scientific paper
1996-07-23
Phys.Rev.E55:4207-4216,1997
Physics
High Energy Physics
High Energy Physics - Theory
23 pages, no figures, REVTeX
Scientific paper
10.1103/PhysRevE.55.4207
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, we have computed the static Casimir energy of a spherical cavity in an otherwise uniform material. As expected the result is divergent; yet a plausible finite answer is extracted, in the leading uniform asymptotic approximation. This result agrees with that found using zeta-function regularization. Numerically, we find far too small an energy to account for the large burst of photons seen in sonoluminescence. If the divergent result is retained, it is of the wrong sign to drive the effect. Dispersion does not resolve this contradiction. In the static approximation, the Fresnel drag term is zero; on the mother hand, electrostriction could be comparable to the Casimir term. It is argued that this adiabatic approximation to the dynamical Casimir effect should be quite accurate.
Milton Kimball A.
NG Yee Jack
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