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Nakayama, Katsumasa*; Suzuki, Kei
Physics Letters B, 843, p.138017_1 - 138017_7, 2023/08
Times Cited Count:0 Percentile:0.02(Astronomy & Astrophysics)The Casimir effect is a quantum phenomenon induced by the zero-point energy of relativistic fields confined in a finite-size system. This effect for photon fields has been studied for a long time, while the realization of counterparts for fermion fields in Dirac/Weyl semimetals is an open question. We theoretically demonstrate the typical properties of the Casimir effect for relativistic electron fields in Dirac/Weyl semimetals and show the results from an effective Hamiltonian for realistic materials such as CdAs and NaBi. We find an oscillation of the Casimir energy as a function of the thickness of the thin film, which stems from the existence of Dirac/Weyl nodes in momentum space. Experimentally, such an effect can be observed in thin films of semimetals, where the thickness dependence of thermodynamic quantities is affected by the Casimir energy.