Massive Scalar Field Casimir Effect Shows Landau-Like Energy Structure

Researchers at the Universidade Federal da Paraíba have uncovered a surprising structure within the quantum vacuum energy of a massive scalar field. The work demonstrates that the energy spectrum exhibits a characteristic Landau-like structure even without an external magnetic field, a phenomenon typically associated with magnetic fields and challenging expectations of how such energy structures arise. Upon analyzing the vacuum energy, the team found it naturally separates into this Landau-like contribution and an additional term stemming from a spatially varying effective mass. Importantly, both contributions are exponentially suppressed in the strong-coupling regime, restricting the domain of validity of the exact spectrum and offering a pathway for future experimental…