Regularization dependence of vacuum energy in arbitrarily shaped cavities

Abstract
The vacuum energy for a free scalar field in the case of an arbitrarily shaped cavity is discussed. A complete analysis of the divergences is presented and some regularization schemes are analyzed in some detail. The vacuum energy for a free scalar field defined on an ultrastatic three‐dimensional space‐time R×S, S being a compact Riemann surface of genus greater than unity, is explicitly computed using the Selberg trace formula. As a result, a negative vacuum energy is found.

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