- Open Access
Dynamical Casimir effect in the worldline formulation
Phys. Rev. D 114, 025016 – Published 21 July, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/vn2g-ryw1
Abstract
We evaluate the effective action for the Dynamical Casimir Effect (DCE) for a real scalar field in dimensions within the worldline formulation of quantum field theory. The scalar field is coupled to a spacetime-dependent mass term, which here plays the role of the moving medium and imposes imperfect boundary conditions on time-dependent surfaces. Expanding in powers of the departure of the geometry from a planar configuration, the worldline path integral factorizes into simpler, lower-dimensional ones. In the limit of a strong coupling to the surface, we recover the Dirichlet result and derive the systematic corrections in inverse powers of the coupling, calculating the imaginary part of the effective action to arbitrary order in those inverse powers. Finally, we also apply the method to a two-surface configuration.
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