{"paper":{"title":"If vacuum energy can be negative, why is mass always positive?: Uses of the subdominant trace energy condition","license":"http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["gr-qc","hep-th"],"primary_cat":"quant-ph","authors_text":"Jacob D. Bekenstein","submitted_at":"2013-10-23T12:27:33Z","abstract_excerpt":"Diverse calculations have shown that a relativistic field confined to a cavity by well defined boundary conditions can have a negative Casimir or vacuum energy. Why then can one not make a finite system with negative mass by confining the field in a some way? We recall, and justify in detail, the not so familiar subdominant trace energy condition for ordinary (baryon-electron nonrelativistic) matter. With its help we show, in two ways, that the mass-energy of the cavity structure necessary to enforce the boundary conditions must exceed the magnitude of the negative vacuum energy, so that all s"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"1310.6203","kind":"arxiv","version":2},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}