Casimir effect confronts cosmological constant

It has been speculated that the zero-point energy of the vacuum, regularized due to the existence of a suitable ultraviolet cut-off scale, could be the source of the non-vanishing cosmological constant that is driving the present acceleration of the universe. We show that the presence of such a cut-off can significantly alter the results for the Casimir force between parallel conducting plates and even lead to repulsive Casimir force when the plate separation is smaller than the cut-off scale length. Using the current experimental data we rule out the possibility that the observed cosmological constant arises from the zero-point energy which is made finite by a suitable cut-off. Any such cut-off which is consistent with the observed Casimir effect will lead to an energy density which is at least about 10(12) times larger than the observed one, if gravity couples to these modes. The implications are discussed. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.