Quantum Institute: Visitor Schedule

The Quantum Lunch is regularly held on Thursdays in the Theoretical Division Conference Room, TA-3, Building 123, Room 121.

The organizing committee includes Malcolm Boshier (P-21), Diego Dalvit (T-4), Michael Di Rosa (C-PCS), Sebastian Deffner (T-4 & CNLS), Changhyun Ryu (P-21) , Nikolai Sinitsyn (T-4), Rolando Somma (T-4), Christopher Ticknor (T-1), and Wojciech Zurek (T-4).

For more information, or to nominate a speaker, contact Sebastian Deffner.

To add your name to the Quantum Lunch email list, contact Kacy Hopwood.

Thursday March 3, 2016
12:30 PM - 2:00 PM

Speaker: Daniel Steck (University of Oregon)

Technical Host: Sebastian Deffner

TOPIC: World-line methods for scalar electromagnetic Casimir potentials

Abstract
The development of new, general methods for the computation of Casimir potentials in arbitrary geometries and for arbitrary material properties remains a difficult problem. I will review our recent work on the world-line method, previously developed for scalar fields coupled to background potentials. This is a path-integral Monte-Carlo method for computing vacuum- and thermal-state energies of the field. Our work focuses on the generalization of this method to electromagnetism. I will review our recent results in considering scalar electromagnetic fields coupled to dielectrics, where we are able to reproduce a number of classic Casimir-potential results within a general framework. I will also briefly review the path towards a generalization to a full vector-electromagnetism formalism.