Non-universal Casimir forces at Bose-Einstein condensation of an ideal gas: effect of Dirichlet boundary conditions

Abstract: We analyze the Casimir forces for an ideal Bose gas enclosed between two infinite parallel walls separated by the distance D. The walls are characterized by the Dirichlet boundary conditions. We show that if the thermodynamic state with Bose-Einstein condensate present is correctly approached along the path pertinent to the Dirichlet b.c. then the leading term describing the large-distance decay of thermal Casimir force between the walls is 1/D^2 with a non-universal amplitude. The next order correction is lnD/D^3. These observations remain in contrast with the decay law for both the periodic and Neumann boundary conditions for which the leading term is 1/D^3 with a universal amplitude. We associate this discrepancy with the non-zero D-dependent positive value of the one-particle ground state energy in the case of Dirichlet boundary conditions.