Saturation effects in experiments on the thermal Casimir effect
arXiv:0812.0509 · doi:10.1209/0295-5075/87/14004
Abstract
We address three different problematic Casimir experiments in this work. The first is the classical Casimir force measured between two metal half spaces; here in the form of the Casimir pressure measurement between a gold sphere and a gold plate as performed by Decca et al. [Phys. Rev. D 75, 077101 (2007)]; theory predicts a large negative thermal correction, absent in the high precision experiment. The second experiment is the measurement of the Casimir force between a metal plate and a laser irradiated semiconductor membrane as performed by Chen et al. [Phys. Rev. B 76, 035338 (2007)]; the change in force with laser intensity is larger than predicted by theory. The third experiment is the measurement of the Casimir force between an atom and a wall in the form of the measurement by Obrecht et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 98 063201 (2007)] of the change in oscillation frequency of a Rb Bose-Einstein condensate trapped to a fused silica wall; the change is smaller than predicted by theory. We show that saturation effects can explain the discrepancies between theory and experiment observed in all these cases.
4 pages, 4 figures
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