Casimir-Polder repulsion: Polarizable atoms, cylinders, spheres, and ellipsoids

Abstract

Recently, the topic of Casimir repulsion has received a great deal of attention, largely because of the possibility of technological application. The general subject has a long history, going back to the self-repulsion of a conducting spherical shell and the repulsion between a perfect electric conductor and a perfect magnetic conductor. Recently it has been observed that repulsion can be achieved between ordinary conducting bodies, provided sufficient anisotropy is present. For example, an anisotropic polarizable atom can be repelled near an aperture in a conducting plate. Here we provide new examples of this effect, including the repulsion on such an atom moving on a trajectory nonintersecting a conducting cylinder; in contrast, such repulsion does not occur outside a sphere. Classically, repulsion does occur between a conducting ellipsoid placed in a uniform electric field and an electric dipole. The Casimir-Polder force between an anisotropic atom and an anisotropic dielectric semispace does not exhibit repulsion. The general systematics of repulsion are becoming clear.

17 pages, 4 figures; new version has added references, some additional discussion, and slight corrections

References in corpus (4)

• Microstructure Effects for Casimir Forces in Chiral Metamaterials
• Exact Casimir-Polder potential between a particle and an ideal metal cylindrical shell and the proximity force approximation
• Casimir Energies of Cylinders: Universal Function
• Electromagnetic Casimir Forces of Parabolic Cylinder and Knife-Edge Geometries

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• Dispersion forces inside metallic waveguides
• Pairwise summation approximation for Casimir potentials and its limitations
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• Magnetostatic interaction energy between a point magnet and a ring magnet
• Complex orientation dependence of Casimir-Polder interaction induced by curvature and optical properties of the surface and the surrounding medium