Abstract
In this Chapter calculations of the vacuum energy in various physical systems are considered. The first example is the celebrated Casimir effect which is an interaction of parallel conducting plates in vacuum. Then, the method of evaluating the vacuum energy through the scattering data of the problem is introduced. With the help of this method, the zero-point energy of the kink soliton in ϕ 4 theory in two dimensions is calculated. The last section treats supersymmetric models. In particular, the mass shift of supersymmetric solitons in 1+1 dimensions is calculated and related to the central charge anomaly. Contrary to naive expectations, this mass shift is non-zero.
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Fursaev, D., Vassilevich, D. (2011). Vacuum Energy. In: Operators, Geometry and Quanta. Theoretical and Mathematical Physics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0205-9_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0205-9_9
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