Hamburg 2009 – scientific programme

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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 35: Quanteneffekte: QED / Interferenz und Korrelationen I

Q 35.1: Talk

Wednesday, March 4, 2009, 14:00–14:15, VMP 6 HS-E

Eddy currents and the thermal Casimir effect — •Francesco Intravaia and Carsten Henkel — Universität Potsdam, Institut für Physik und Astronomie, Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 24/25, 14476 Potsdam, Germany

We study the contribution of eddy currents to the Casimir effect between two thick metallic plates. Using the Drude model for the optical response of the metal, we identify a class of diffusive modes that live in the bulk of the two plates and are electromagnetically coupled across the vacuum gap. Recently, it was pointed out that eddy currents give an important contribution to the heat transfer between two metallic surfaces [1]. It also turns out that the contribution of these modes is responsible for the difficulties in calculating the thermal correction for the Casimir force [2]. Even the applicability of the Nernst heat theorem (third law of thermodynamics) must reviewed: in fact the subspace spanned by the eddy currents can generate a highly degenerate ground state for a temperature-dependent dissipation rate. Features of the eddy spectrum also suggest that these modes may not be in equilibrium for an experiment with a finite characteristic duration. We propose to evaluate an adiabatic pressure in order to take into account this phenomenon.
[1]P.-O. Chapuis, S. Volz, C. Henkel, K. Joulain, and J.-J. Greffet, Phys. Rev. B 77, 035431 (2008).
[2] K. A. Milton, J. Phys. A 37 (2004) R209; G. L. Klimchitskaya and V. M. Mostepanenko, Contemp. Phys. 47 (2006) 13