Is the Casimir effect a result of quantum fluctuations in the Maxwell field?

Is the Casimir effect a result of quantum fluctuations in the Maxwell field? Ask Question Asked 9 months ago Modified today Viewed 150 times 1 Since the Maxwell field describes electromagnetic waves, and quantum mechanics tells us the vacuum has zero-point energy due to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle — can the Casimir effect be directly explained by quantum fluctuations of the electromagnetic (Maxwell) field? qiskit Share Improve this question Follow asked Jul 24, 2025 at 19:04 Mohammed Asem 533 3 bronze badges 3 Thanks for your question. What does this have to do with quantum computing, broadly defined? –  Mark Spinelli Commented Jul 24, 2025 at 21:21 Add a comment 1 Answer Sorted by: Highest score (default) Date modified (newest first) Date created (oldest first) 0 The Casimir pressure comes from a ground‑state energy difference of a quantum field subject to different boundary conditions. Evaluating that difference in more than one spatial dimension quickly becomes an exponentially hard many‑body problem for classical computers, but it is polynomial for a quantum processor because the field’s Hilbert space can be mapped directly onto qubits. In other words, finding Casimir forces is a special case of computing vacuum properties of a quantum field theory, exactly the sort of task quantum algorithms were designed for. More about simulating QFT on the quantum computer is written by Presskil: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1111.3633 Simulating the effect can be found in "Casimir energy with chiral fermions" on a quantum computer extracted with VQE: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2105.02032 In qiskit you could do something like this, however i dont know how to make the lattice model. from qiskit_nature.second_q.hamiltonians import LatticeModel from qiskit_nature.second_q.mappers import LogarithmicMapper from qiskit.algorithms import VQE, MinimumEigensolverResult from qiskit.circuit.library import RealAmplitudes from qiskit_aer import AerSimulator # build lattice model H_in, H_out (with and without plates) ... mapper = LogarithmicMapper() qubit_op_in = mapper.map(H_in.second_q_op()) qubit_op_out = mapper.map(H_out.second_q_op()) ansatz = RealAmplitudes(qubit_op_in.num_qubits, reps=3) vqe = VQE(ansatz, optimizer='SPSA', quantum_instance=AerSimulator()) E_in = vqe.compute_minimum_eigenvalue(qubit_op_in).optimal_value E_out = vqe.compute_minimum_eigenvalue(qubit_op_out).optimal_value pressure = -(E_in - E_out)/L**2 # simple 1D example Share Improve this answer Follow edited Jul 27, 2025 at 14:03 answered Jul 27, 2025 at 13:58 Bram 1,5418 8 silver badges 10 10 bronze badges Add a comment Your Answer Sign up or log in Sign up using Google Sign up using Email and Password Post as a guest Name Email Required, but never shown Post Your Answer By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy. 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