The Casimir effect in non-Abelian gauge theories on the lattice
| dc.contributor.advisor | Horowitz, William | |
| dc.contributor.advisor | Rothkopf, Alexander | |
| dc.contributor.author | Ngwenya, Blessed Arthur | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2025-09-18T09:37:53Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2025-09-18T09:37:53Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2025 | |
| dc.date.updated | 2025-09-18T09:34:52Z | |
| dc.identifier.apacitation | Ngwenya, B. A. (2025). <i>The Casimir effect in non-Abelian gauge theories on the lattice</i>. (). University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Science ,Department of Physics. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/11427/41849 | en_ZA |
| dc.identifier.chicagocitation | Ngwenya, Blessed Arthur. <i>"The Casimir effect in non-Abelian gauge theories on the lattice."</i> ., University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Science ,Department of Physics, 2025. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/41849 | en_ZA |
| dc.identifier.citation | Ngwenya, B.A. 2025. The Casimir effect in non-Abelian gauge theories on the lattice. . University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Science ,Department of Physics. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/41849 | en_ZA |
| dc.identifier.ris | TY - Thesis / Dissertation AU - Ngwenya, Blessed AB - We present non-perturbative results of the Casimir potential in non-abelian gauge theories in (2+1)D and (3+1)D for SU(2) and SU(3) in the confined and deconfined phases. For the first time, geometries beyond parallel plates in (3+1)D SU(Nc) are explored, and we show that the Casimir effect for the symmetrical and asymmetrical tube and box is attractive. The result for the tube is contrary to the weakly coupled, massless non-interacting scalar field theory result where a repulsive Casimir force, described by a negative slope of the potential, is measured in this geometry. We pro pose various techniques that can be used to account for the energy contributions from creating the boundaries in the geometry of a tube and box where the size of the faces forming the walls of the geometries changes with separation distance. We show that increasing the temperature from a confined to a deconfined phase does not alter the measured potential and we motivate for this observation by showing that the masses of the particles in the Casimir interactions are lower than the lowest glueball mass, M0++ in the pure gauge ground state, thus suggesting that the region inside the ge ometries is a boundary-induced deconfined phase. Through the measured expectation value of the Polyakov loop, we propose that the Casimir effect for the asymmetrical tube in the large separation distance limit R → ∞ should be equivalent to that of the parallel plate geometry at smallest separation distance, while the asymmetrical box in the same limit should be equivalent to the symmetrical tube at smallest separation distance DA - 2025 DB - OpenUCT DP - University of Cape Town KW - Philosophy in Physics LK - https://open.uct.ac.za PB - University of Cape Town PY - 2025 T1 - The Casimir effect in non-Abelian gauge theories on the lattice TI - The Casimir effect in non-Abelian gauge theories on the lattice UR - http://hdl.handle.net/11427/41849 ER - | en_ZA |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/11427/41849 | |
| dc.identifier.vancouvercitation | Ngwenya BA. The Casimir effect in non-Abelian gauge theories on the lattice. []. University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Science ,Department of Physics, 2025 [cited yyyy month dd]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/41849 | en_ZA |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.language.rfc3066 | eng | |
| dc.publisher.department | Department of Physics | |
| dc.publisher.faculty | Faculty of Science | |
| dc.publisher.institution | University of Cape Town | |
| dc.subject | Philosophy in Physics | |
| dc.title | The Casimir effect in non-Abelian gauge theories on the lattice | |
| dc.type | Thesis / Dissertation | |
| dc.type.qualificationlevel | Doctoral | |
| dc.type.qualificationlevel | PhD |