Hamburg 2009 – scientific programme
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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 35: Quanteneffekte: QED / Interferenz und Korrelationen I
Q 35.2: Talk
Wednesday, March 4, 2009, 14:15–14:30, VMP 6 HS-E
Thermal Casimir and Casimir-Polder interaction with superconductors and metals — •Harald Haakh, Francesco Intravaia, and Carsten Henkel — Universität Potsdam, Institut für Physik und Astronomie, Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 24/25, 14476 Potsdam, Germany
We study the Casimir interactions with superconducting surfaces, with emphasis on
finite temperature corrections. This is motivated by current controversies around
the interaction between dissipative plates [1]. For the atom-surface interaction, we
analyze the magnetic dipole contribution whose resonance frequencies are unusually
small relative to the temperature.
We use thermal response theory and characterize the superconductor
by common optical models.
The atom-metal interaction (free) energy allows to recover previous results [2]
and is for T > 0 strongly suppressed at large distances. The atom-superconductor
entropy jumps at Tc, illustrating the “participation" of the atom in the phase transition.
The similarities between the two Casimir interactions suggest that the thermal Casimir
controversy for metals could be checked by precision measurements
of the atom-surface interaction, e.g., using differences between isotopes that differ only
in their magnetic properties.
[1]
K. A. Milton, J. Phys. A 37 (2004) R209;
G. L. Klimchitskaya and V. M. Mostepanenko,
Contemp. Phys. 47 (2006) 131
[2] C. Henkel, B. Power, and F. Sols, J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 19 (2005) 34