Dynamical Casimir effect with Robin boundary conditions in a three dimensional open cavity

We consider a massless scalar field in 1+1 dimensions inside a cavity composed by a fixed plate, which imposes on the field a Robin BC, and an oscillating one, which imposes on the field a Dirichlet BC. Assuming that the plate moves for a finite time interval, and considering parametric resonance, we compute the total number of created particles inside the cavity. We generalize our results to the case of two parallel plates in 3+1 dimensions.Comment: This work was presented in the Conference QFEXT09, held at the University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA, September 21-25, 2009, and will appear in the proceedings of this conference. It contains 4 figure

The Zeta Function Method and the Harmonic Oscillator Propagator

We show how the pre-exponential factor of the Feynman propagator for the harmonic oscillator can be computed by the generalized $\zeta$-function method. Besides, we establish a direct equivalence between this method and Schwinger's propertime method.Comment: 12 latex pages, no figure