On the Casimir energy for a 2N-piece relativistic string

The Casimir energy for the transverse oscillations of a piecewise uniform closed string is calculated. The string consists of 2N pieces of equal length, of alternating type I and type II material, and is taken to be relativistic in the sense that the velocity of sound always equals the velocity of light. By means of a new recursion formula we manage to calculate the Casimir energy for arbitrary integers N. Agreement with results obtained in earlier works on the string is found in all special cases. As basic regularization method we use the contour integration method. As a check, agreement is found with results obtained from the zeta function method (the Hurwitz function) in the case of low N(N=1-4). The Casimir energy is generally negative, and the more so the larger is the value of N. We illustrate the results graphically in some cases. The generalization to finite temperature theory is also given. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.