Casimir Energy Corrections by Light-Cone Fluctuations

We study the effects of light-cone fluctuations on the renormalized zero-point energy associated with a free massless scalar field in the presence of boundaries. In order to simulate light-cone fluctuations we introduce a space-time dependent random coefficient in the Klein-Gordon operator. We assume that the field is defined in a domain with one confined direction. For simplicity, we choose the symmetric case of two parallel plates separated by a distance a. The correction to the renormalized vacuum energy density between the plates goes as 1/a⁸ instead of the usual 1/a⁴ dependence for the free case. In turn we also show that light-cone fluctuations break down the vacuum pressure homogeneity between the plates.