Conformal field theory of critical Casimir forces

Thermal fluctuations of a critical system induce long-ranged Casimir forces between objects that couple to the underlying field. For two dimensional conformal field theories (CFT) we derive exact results for the Casimir interaction for a deformed strip and for two compact objects of arbitrary shape in terms of the free energy of a standard region (circular ring or flat strip) whose dimension is determined by the mutual capacitance of two conductors with the objects' shape; and a purely geometric energy that is proportional to conformal charge of the CFT, but otherwise super-universal in that it depends only on the shapes and is independent of boundary conditions and other details. The effect of inhomogenous boundary conditions is also discussed.