Casimir effect as a probe for new physics phenomenology

In this talk, I am going to show some recent cutting-edge results associated with the Casimir effect, a phenomenon that can be safely regarded as the first-ever manifestation of the zero-point energy, and thus as one of the earliest experimental verifications of Quantum Field Theory. After a preliminary introduction to the subject, I will focus the attention on the remarkable sensitivity of the Casimir effect to new physics phenomenology. Such an awareness can be readily discerned by virtue of the existence of extra contributions that the measurable quantities (such as the emergent pressure and strength within the physical apparatus) acquire for a given physical setting. In particular, by relying on the above framework, I will outline the possibility of detecting the predictions of a novel quantum field theoretical description for particle mixing according to which the flavor and the mass vacuum are unitarily inequivalent. Furthermore, by extending the very same formalism to curved backgrounds, the opportunity to probe extended models of gravity that encompass local Lorentz symmetry breaking and the strong equivalence principle violation is also discussed. Finally, the influence of quantum gravity on the Casimir effect is briefly tackled by means of heuristic considerations. In a similar scenario, the presence of a minimal length at the Planck scale is the source of the discrepancy with the standard outcomes.