The Casimir effect within scattering theory

By A. Lambrecht, P. M. Maia Neto, S. Reynaud. 2006

167 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We review the theory of the Casimir effect using scattering techniques. After years of theoretical effort, this formalism is now largely mastered so that the accuracy of theory–experiment comparisons is determined by the level of precision and pertinence of the description of experimental conditions. Due to an imperfect knowledge of the optical properties of real mirrors used in the experiment, the effect of imperfect reflection remains a source of uncertainty in theory–experiment comparisons. For the same reason, the temperature dependence of the Casimir force between dissipative mirrors remains a matter of debate. We also emphasize that real mirrors do not obey exactly the assumption of specular reflection, which is used in nearly all calculations of material and temperature corrections. This difficulty may be solved by using a more general scattering formalism accounting for non-specular reflection with wavevectors and field polarizations mixed. This general formalism has already been fruitfully used for evaluating the effect of roughness on the Casimir force as well as the lateral Casimir force appearing between corrugated surfaces. The commonly used ‘proximity force approximation (PFA)’ turns out to lead to inaccuracies in the description of these two effects.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Civil and Structural Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5cca32905458a3a840d85da97829421b80e838b9

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Citations in the corpus

The Casimir force between real materials: Experiment and theory (2009, background): “This is often referred to as the representation of the Casimir energy in terms of the functional determinants (Emig et al., 2006; Kenneth, Klich, 2006, 2008) or in terms of the scattering matrices (Bulgac et al., 2006; Lambrecht et al., 2006).”
Materials perspective on Casimir and van der Waals interactions (2015, methodology): “The resulting spectral methods (Balian and Duplantier, 1978; Dalvit et al., 2006; Emig et al., 2007; Kenneth and Klich, 2008; Lambrecht et al., 2006; Lambrecht and Marachevsky, 2008; Mazzitelli et al., 2006; Milton et al., 2008; Rahi et al., 2009) are advantageous in a number of ways: First, they…”