  Casimir energy is a nonlocal effect; its magnitude cannot be deduced from
heat kernel expansions, even those including the integrated boundary terms. On
the other hand, it is known that the divergent terms in the regularized (but
not yet renormalized) total vacuum energy are associated with the heat kernel
coefficients. Here a recent study of the relations among the eigenvalue
density, the heat kernel, and the integral kernel of the operator
$e^{-t\sqrt{H}}$ is exploited to characterize this association completely.
Various previously isolated observations about the structure of the regularized
energy emerge naturally. For over 20 years controversies have persisted
stemming from the fact that certain (presumably physically meaningful) terms in
the renormalized vacuum energy density in the interior of a cavity become
singular at the boundary and correlate to certain divergent terms in the
regularized total energy. The point of view of the present paper promises to
help resolve these issues.
