MG11 
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Local and global Casimir Energies

There has been recent controversy about the meaning of Casimir energies due to severe divergence problems and ill-defined renormalization procedures. Some of the difficulties are associated with using overly idealized boundary conditions rather than modeling realistic physical surfaces. Especially acute is the disconnect between local quantum vacuum energy densities and global total energies. There are also energies associated with the boundaries themselves. Progress in resolving these difficulties, and their bearing on gravitational phenomena, including dark energy, will be discussed.