| Abstract: | In this talk, I consider the electromagnetic field in contact with dielectric matter. I estimate the effect of dissipation and dispersion 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. I 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. Finally, I consider the field entropy in a toy model of the field interacting with two plates, where one can identify an overall, divergent field entropy whose distance dependent part is finite. |
