Regensburg 2002 – scientific programme
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DY: Dynamik und Statistische Physik
DY 27: Quantenchaos II
DY 27.4: Talk
Tuesday, March 12, 2002, 17:15–17:30, H3
Probing the Strong Boundary Shape Dependence of the Casimir Force — •Thorsten Emig1,2, Andreas Hanke2, Ramin Golestanian3,4, and Mehran Kardar2,5 — 1Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität zu Köln, Zülpicher Strasse 77, 50937 Köln — 2Physics Department, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA — 3Institute for Advanced Studies in Basic Sciences, Zanjan 45195-159, Iran — 4Institute for Studies in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics, P.O. Box 19395-5531, Tehran, Iran — 5Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106
Casimir forces are regarded as one of the most striking manifestations of quantum fluctuations. Due to their topological nature, their geometry dependence can be controlled by tailoring the shapes of the interacting surfaces. Recently, there was a resurgence of experiments on Casimir forces, showing also their profound effect on microstructures [1].
We study their geometry dependence for deformed metal plates by a path integral quantization. For the first time, we give a complete analytical result for the deformation induced change in Casimir energy δ E in an experimentally testable, nontrivial geometry, consisting of a flat and a corrugated plate. Our results show an interesting crossover for δ E as a function of the ratio of the mean plate distance H, to the corrugation length λ: For λ ≪ H we find a slower decay ∼ H−4, compared to the H−5 behavior predicted by the commonly used pairwise summation of van der Waals forces, which is valid only for λ ≫ H [2].
[1] H. B. Chan et al., Science 291, 1941 (2001); Phys. Rev. Lett. 87, 211801 (2001). [2] T. Emig et al., Phys. Rev. Lett., in press (2001).