Repulsive Casimir and Casimir–Polder forces

By Kimball A. Milton, E. Abalo, P. Parashar, N. Pourtolami, Iver Brevik, S. Ellingsen. 2012

179 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Casimir and Casimir–Polder repulsions have been known for more than 50 years. The general ‘Lifshitz’ configuration of parallel semi-infinite dielectric slabs permits repulsion if they are separated by a dielectric fluid that has a value of permittivity that is intermediate between those of the dielectric slabs. This was indirectly confirmed in the 1970s, and more directly by Capasso’s group recently. It has also been known for many years that electrically and magnetically polarizable bodies can experience a repulsive quantum vacuum force. More amenable to practical application are situations where repulsion could be achieved between ordinary conducting and dielectric bodies in vacuum. The status of the field of Casimir repulsion with emphasis on some recent developments will be surveyed. Here, stress will be placed on analytic developments, especially on Casimir–Polder (CP) interactions between anisotropically polarizable atoms, and CP interactions between anisotropic atoms and bodies that also exhibit anisotropy, either because of anisotropic constituents, or because of geometry. Repulsion occurs for wedge-shaped and cylindrical conductors, provided the geometry is sufficiently asymmetric, that is, either the wedge is sufficiently sharp or the atom is sufficiently far from the cylinder. This article is part of a special issue of Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical in honour of Stuart Dowker’s 75th birthday devoted to ‘Applications of zeta functions and other spectral functions in mathematics and physics’.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c554528a13a076aa34fc147788bd7a6143ca660a

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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

In Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

Citations in the corpus

Materials perspective on Casimir and van der Waals interactions (2015, background): “…the enhancement can be understood as arising not only from the presence of additional bodies, but from increased repulsion due to the larger polarizability of the particles as they interact with fringing fields near the edge of the plate (Eberlein and Zietal, 2011; Milton et al., 2011, 2012).”