Eur. Phys. J. D (2014) 68: 328
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2014-50484-8

Regular Article

Casimir forces in a plasma: possible connections to Yukawa potentials

¹ Department of Applied Mathematics, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
² Centre for Materials Science and Nanotechnology, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1048 Blindern, 0316 Oslo, Norway
³ Department of Energy and Process Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 7491 Trondheim, Norway
⁴ Department of Physics, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1048 Blindern, 0316 Oslo, Norway
⁵ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Royal Institute of Technology, 10044 Stockholm, Sweden
⁶ Physikalisches Institut, Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg, Hermann-Herder-Str. 3, 79104 Freiburg, Germany
⁷ Division of Theory and Modeling, Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology, Linköping University, 58183 Linköping, Sweden

^a e-mail: iver.h.brevik@ntnu.no

Received: 30 June 2014
Received in final form: 29 August 2014
Published online: 28 October 2014

Abstract

We present theoretical and numerical results for the screened Casimir effect between perfect metal surfaces in a plasma. We show how the Casimir effect in an electron-positron plasma can provide an important contribution to nuclear interactions. Our results suggest that there is a connection between Casimir forces and nucleon forces mediated by mesons. Correct nuclear energies and meson masses appear to emerge naturally from the screened Casimir-Lifshitz effect.