| Abstract: | At zero temperature, quantum electrodynamics predicts non-trivial effects when the fields are coupled to material, such as the attraction between perfect mirrors known as the Casimir force. While this effect merely requires perfect boundary conditions on the field, more realistic boundaries inherently contain dissipation. In this work, we estimate the effect of dissipation on the state of the field through it's entanglement entropy. The presence of this entropy at zero temperature signals the inevitable entanglement between the field and the material. We identify the cutoff dependence of the von Neumann entropy of the field in simple gaussian models and derive formulas for the part of the entanglement entropy associated with the distance between two dissipative objects, in a philosophy similar to the one used in Casimir physics. |
