Investigating the Spectral Geometry of a Soft Wall Academic Article

abstract

• The idealized theory of quantum vacuum energy density is a beautiful application of the spectral theory of differential operators with boundary conditions, but its conclusions are physically unacceptable. A more plausible model of a reflecting boundary that stays within linear spectral theory confines the waves by a steeply rising potential function, which can be taken as a power of one coordinate, z^alpha. We report investigations of this model with considerable student involvement. An exact analytical solution with some numerics for alpha=1 and an asymptotic (semiclassical) analysis of a related problem for alpha=2 are presented.

authors

• Fulling, Stephen

published proceedings

• SPECTRAL GEOMETRY

author list (cited authors)

• Bouas, J. D., Fulling, S. A., Mera, F. D., Thapa, K., Trendafilova, C. S., & Wagner, J.

complete list of authors

• Bouas, JD||Fulling, SA||Mera, FD||Thapa, K||Trendafilova, CS||Wagner, J

publication date

• June 2012

published in

• Proceedings of Symposia in Pure Mathematics  Journal

keywords

• 81q05, 81t99, 35p99
• Hep-th
• Math-ph
• Math.mp
• Quant-ph

start page

• 139

end page

• 154

volume

• 84