Temperature dependence of the Casimir effect between metallic mirrors

We calculate the Casimir force and free energy for plane metallic mirrors at nonzero temperature. Numerical evaluations are given with temperature and conductivity effects treated simultaneously. The results are compared with the approximation where both effects are treated independently and the corrections simply multiplied. The deviation between the exact and approximated results takes the form of a temperature dependent function for which an analytical expression is given. The knowledge of this function allows simple estimations that are accurate below the 1% level.