Archimedes force on Casimir apparatus

Abstract

This paper addresses a problem of Casimir apparatus in dense medium, put in weak gravitational field. The falling of the apparatus has to be governed by the equivalence principle with proper account for contributions to the weight of the apparatus from its material part and from distorted quantum fields. We discuss general expression for the corresponding force in metric with cylindrical symmetry. By way of example, we compute explicit expression for Archimedes force, acting on the Casimir apparatus of finite size, immersed into thermal bath of free scalar field. It is shown that besides universal term, proportional to the volume of the apparatus, there are non-universal quantum corrections, depending on the boundary conditions.