Generalized Ford-Vilenkin approach for the dynamical Casimir effect

Full text: In the 70s decade the first works investigating the quantum problem of the radiation emitted by moving mirrors in vacuum were published by Moore, DeWitt, Fulling and Davies. This effect, usually named dynamical Casimir effect (DCE). The DCE is also related to several other problems like particle creation in cosmological models and radiation emitted by collapsing black holes, decoherence, entanglement the Unruh effect. The DCE has been subject to experimental investigations: few months ago, Wilson and collaborators have announced the first experimental observation of the DCE. The theory of the DCE has been investigated by many authors, among them Ford and Vilenkin [L.H. Ford and A. Vilenkin, Phys. Rev. D 25, 2569 (1982)] who developed a perturbative method, which can be applied to moving mirrors in small displacements δq(t) = εF (t) and with nonrelativistic velocities. The usual application of the Ford-Vilenkin approach to the calculation of the spectrum of the created particles, results in the spectral distribution proportional to ε2. In the present paper, we consider a real massless scalar field and a moving mirror in a two-dimensional spacetime, satisfying Dirichlet boundary condition at the instantaneous position of the mirror, for large displacements and relativistic velocities. We generalize the Ford-Vilenkin approach to the calculation of the spectral density of the created particles, obtaining formulas for the spectrum up to order εn. (author)