Casimir force variability in one-dimensional QED systems

Abstract

The Casimir force between two short-range charge sources, embedded in a background of one dimensional massive Dirac fermions, is explored by means of the original $\ln\text{[Wronskian]}$ contour integration techniques. For identical sources with the same (positive) charge, we find that in the non-perturbative region the Casimir interaction between them can reach sufficiently large negative values and simultaneously reveal the features of a long-range force in spite of nonzero fermion mass, that could significantly influence the properties of such quasi-one-dimensional QED systems. For large distances $s$ between sources we recover that their mutual interaction is governed first of all by the structure of the discrete spectrum of a single source, in dependence on which it can be tuned to give an attractive, a repulsive, or an (almost) compensated Casimir force with various rates of the exponential fall-down, quite different from the standard $\exp (-2 m s)$ law. By means of the same $\ln\text{[Wronskian]}$ techniques, the case of two $\delta$-sources is also considered in a self-consistent manner with similar results for the variability of the Casimir force. A quite different behavior of the Casimir force is found for the antisymmetric source-anti-source system. In particular, in this case, there is no possibility for a long-range interaction between sources. The asymptotics of the Casimir force follows the standard $\exp (-2 m s)$ law. Moreover, for small separations between sources, the Casimir force for symmetric and antisymmetric cases turns out to be of opposite sign.