Erlangen 2018 – scientific programme
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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 31: Quantum Effects (QED)
Q 31.5: Talk
Tuesday, March 6, 2018, 15:00–15:15, K 1.013
Casimir Force and Torque for Nonreciprocal Media and Applications to Photonic Topoligical Insulators — •Frieder Lindel1,2, Sebastian Fuchs1,2, and Stefan Yoshi Buhmann1,3 — 1Physikalisches Institut, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Hermann-Herder-Straße 3, 79104 Freiburg, Germany — 2Department of Chemistry, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z1, Canada — 3Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Albertstraße 19, 79104 Freiburg, Germany
The Casimir force was originally proposed as an attractive force between two perfectly conducting plates due to a reduced virtual photon pressure in the space between the plates. In macroscopic quantum electrodynamics (QED) the Casimir force was further generalised to bodies of arbitrary shape and material by realising that its existence stems from fluctuating charge carries within the materials.
We derive an even more general expression of the Casimir force within this framework of macroscopic QED for the case of bodies which break the Lorentz reciprocity condition and thus violate time reversal symmetry. We apply our result to a certain photonic topological insulator media, namely magnetised plasma with a static bias magnetic field to find that the Casimir force can be tuned by controlling the bias field. We further show that for certain configurations there exists a tunable Casimir torque which shows unique features due to uni-directional surface plasmons provided by the topological structure of the material.