On the Casimir effect in a static chromomagnetic field

In this paper we compute the regularized vacuum energy associated with vectorial perturbations of the SU(2) Yang-Mills field. We regard Dirichlet and twisted boundary conditions in a chromomagnetic background, at zero temperature. Then, we analyse the behavior of the Casimir energy in the weak and strong coupling regimens, comparing with similar results obtained for the scalar and spinorial fields in an ordinary magnetic field background. In the weak coupling scenario, we show that it is necessary to introduce mass in the perturbations in order to leave manifest the effects due to the chromomagnetic field. Otherwise, in the strong coupling regimen, we evaluate the effects of the mass as well as of a compact extra dimension on the stabilization of the regularized vacuum energy.