Sign Flip in the Casimir Force for Interacting Fermion Systems

In this work we consider a fermionic chain of finite length $\ell$. Fermions are allowed to interact and are forced to obey boundary conditions, thus altering the process of condensation. Our goal is to explore how this affects the quantum vacuum energy for this system. We approach this problem by using a self-consistent method and observe a nontrivial behavior in the Casimir force, displaying a switch from an attractive to a repulsive regime. This flip stems from the competition between the attractive contribution from the usual fermionic Casimir effect and a repulsive one coming from the condensate.

Figure 1

Typical profiles of the complex solution for the condensate illustrating how the solution changes when the parameters are varied. The solid (red) line represents the phase winding.

Figure 2

Casimir pressure (in units of $g$) as a function of the parameter $\nu$ and of the separation $\ell$.