  A powerful procedure is presented for calculating the Casimir attraction
between plane parallel multilayers made up of homogeneous regions with
arbitrary magnetic and dielectric properties by use of the Minkowski
energy-momentum tensor. The theory is applied to numerous geometries and shown
to reproduce a number of results obtained by other authors. Although the
various pieces of theory drawn upon are well known, the relative ease with
which the Casimir force density in even complex planar structures may be
calculated, appears not to be widely appreciated, and no single paper to the
author's knowledge renders explicitly the procedure demonstrated herein.
Results may be seen as an important building block in the settling of issues of
fundamental interest, such as the long-standing dispute over the thermal
behaviour of the Casimir force or the question of what is the correct stress
tensor to apply, a discussion re-quickened by the newly suggested alternative
theory due to Raabe and Welsch.
