Casimir-Polder interaction of fullerene molecules with surfaces

Abstract

We calculate the thermal Casimir--Polder potential of C60 and C70 fullerene molecules near gold and silicon nitride surfaces, motivated by their relevance for molecular matter wave interference experiments. We obtain the coefficients governing the asymptotic power laws of the interaction in the thermal, retarded and nonretarded distance regimes and evaluate the full potential numerically. The interaction is found to be dominated by electronic transitions, and hence independent of the internal temperature of the molecules. The contributions from phonon transitions, which are affected by the molecular temperature, give rise to only a small correction. Moreover, we find that the sizeable molecular line widths of thermal fullerenes may modify the nonretarded interaction, depending on the model used. Detailed measurements of the nonretarded potential of fullerene thus allow one to distinguish between different theories of incorporating damping.

9 pages, 8 figures, 9 tables

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Cited by in corpus (16)

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• Macroscopic Quantum Electrodynamics and Density Functional Theory Approaches to Dispersion Interactions between Fullerenes
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• Impact of nuclear vibrations on van der Waals and Casimir interactions at zero and finite temperature
• Two-dimensional simulation of quantum reflection
• Retarded room temperature Hamaker coefficients between bulk elemental metals
• Requirements for probing chiral Casimir-Polder forces in a molecular Talbot-Lau interferometer
• Probing atoms and molecules close to macroscopic bodies