Published April 15, 2009 | Version v1
Journal article

Fermionic Casimir densities in toroidally compactified spacetimes with applications to nanotubes

  • 1. INFN, Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati, Via Enrico Fermi 40, 00044 Frascati (Italy)
  • 2. Department of Physics, Yerevan State University, 1 Alex Manoogian Street, 0025 Yerevan (Armenia)

Description

Fermionic condensate and the vacuum expectation values of the energy-momentum tensor are investigated for a massive spinor field in higher-dimensional spacetimes with an arbitrary number of toroidally compactified spatial dimensions. By using the Abel-Plana summation formula and the zeta function technique we present the vacuum expectation values in two different forms. Applications of the general formulas to cylindrical and toroidal carbon nanotubes are given. We show that the topological Casimir energy is positive for metallic cylindrical nanotubes and is negative for semiconducting ones. The toroidal compactification of a cylindrical nanotube along its axis increases the Casimir energy for metallic-type (periodic) boundary conditions along its axis and decreases the Casimir energy for the semiconducting-type compactifications.

Additional details

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Physical Review. D, Particles Fields
Journal Volume
79
Journal Issue
8
Journal Page Range
p. 085019-085019.11
ISSN
0556-2821
CODEN
PRVDAQ

INIS

Country of Publication
United States
Country of Input or Organization
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
INIS RN
41056377
Subject category
S77: NANOSCIENCE AND NANOTECHNOLOGY;
Descriptors DEI
BOUNDARY CONDITIONS; CARBON; COMPACTIFICATION; CONDENSATES; CYLINDRICAL CONFIGURATION; DENSITY; ENERGY-MOMENTUM TENSOR; FERMIONS; NANOTUBES; PERIODICITY; SPACE-TIME; SPINOR FIELDS
Descriptors DEC
CONFIGURATION; ELEMENTS; NANOSTRUCTURES; NONMETALS; PHYSICAL PROPERTIES; TENSORS; VARIATIONS

Optional Information

Notes
(c) 2009 The American Physical Society