Experimental approaches to the difference in the Casimir force through the varying optical properties of boundary surface

Abstract

We propose two novel experiments on the measurement of the Casimir force acting between a gold coated sphere and semiconductor plates with markedly different charge carrier densities. In the first of these experiments a patterned Si plate is used which consists of two sections of different dopant densities and oscillates in the horizontal direction below a sphere. The measurement scheme in this experiment is differential, i.e., allows the direct high-precision measurement of the difference of the Casimir forces between the sphere and sections of the patterned plate or the difference of the equivalent pressures between Au and patterned parallel plates with static and dynamic techniques, respectively. The second experiment proposes to measure the Casimir force between the same sphere and a VO${}_2$ film which undergoes the insulator-metal phase transition with the increase of temperature. We report the present status of the interferometer based variable temperature apparatus developed to perform both experiments and present the first results on the calibration and sensitivity. The magnitudes of the Casimir forces and pressures in the experimental configurations are calculated using different theoretical approaches to the description of optical and conductivity properties of semiconductors at low frequencies proposed in the literature. It is shown that the suggested experiments will aid in the resolution of theoretical problems arising in the application of the Lifshitz theory at nonzero temperature to real materials. They will also open new opportunities in nanotechnology.

23 pages of the text, 2 tables, and captions of 12 figures (to appear in Phys. Rev. A)

References in corpus (7)

• The Casimir effect for a sphere and a cylinder in front of plane and corrections to the proximity force theorem
• On the torque on birefringent plates induced by quantum fluctuations
• Worldline algorithms for Casimir configurations
• A novel experimental approach for the detection of the dynamic Casimir effect
• Demonstration of optically modulated dispersion forces
• Demonstration of the difference Casimir force for samples with different charge carrier densities
• Experimental test for the conductivity properties from the Casimir force between metal and semiconductor

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Influence of slab thickness on the Casimir force
• Experimental procedures for precision measurements of the Casimir force with an Atomic Force Microscope
• Problems in the theory of thermal Casimir force between dielectrics and semiconductors
• Recent Developments in the Casimir Effect
• Control of the Casimir Force Using Semiconductor Test Bodies
• Magnetic materials and the problem of thermal Casimir force
• New approach to the thermal Casimir force between real metals
• Low noise cryogenic system for the measurement of Casimir energy in rigid cavities
• Casimir force calculations near the insulator-conductor transition in gold thin films
• Normal and lateral Casimir force: Advances and prospects