Generation of photons in a lossy and detuned cavity with an oscillating boundary

A possibility of creating photons from vacuum due to the nonstationary Casimir effect in a weakly damped nondegenerate cavity with vibrating boundaries is analyzed in the case of a nonzero detuning from the exact resonance. It is shown that the photon generation is possible provided that the relative detuning and inverse quality factor do not exceed the critical value of the order of 10(-8). Under this condition, the field goes finally to a highly squeezed quantum state. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.