The Casimir effect in Gribov-Zwanziger theory

Abstract

We consider Yang-Mills theory with two infinite parallel plates, separated by a distance \(L\), that are perfect magnetic conductors (PMC) or perfect electric conductors (PEC). Recently, it was shown that the Gribov copy problem persists in such a setting. We then study the Gribov-Zwanziger (GZ) action in the presence of those boundaries using functional integral methods. Lagrange multiplier fields allow one to lift the boundary conditions into the action, after which the boundary modifications to the gluon propagator can straightforwardly be determined. In the PEC case, we provide evidence that, even when translation invariance is (partially) broken, the usual horizon term in the GZ action still restricts the functional integral to the Gribov region. We compute the Casimir energy for GZ with PMC or PEC plates, both directly from the functional integral and from the energy-momentum tensor, obtaining consistent results. We compare our analytical results with recent lattice data, in both 4D and 3D. A priori, one might expect that the boundary-modified gluon propagator introduces new \(L\)-dependencies into the GZ gap equation. This would make the Gribov mass \(γ\) dynamically dependent on \(L\), implying an interesting interplay with the Casimir energy. However, we show that no such dynamical \(L\)-dependence occurs within the current approximation.