Repulsive Casimir and Casimir-Polder Forces

Abstract

Casimir and Casimir-Polder repulsion have been known for more than 50 years. The general "Lifshitz" configuration of parallel semi-infinite dielectric slabs permits repulsion if they are separated by a dielectric fluid that has a value of permittivity that is intermediate between those of the dielectric slabs. This was indirectly confirmed in the 1970s, and more directly by Capasso's group recently. It has also been known for many years that electrically and magnetically polarizable bodies can experience a repulsive quantum vacuum force. More amenable to practical application are situations where repulsion could be achieved between ordinary conducting and dielectric bodies in vacuum. The status of the field of Casimir repulsion with emphasis on recent developments will be surveyed. Here, stress will be placed on analytic developments, especially of Casimir-Polder (CP) interactions between anisotropically polarizable atoms, and CP interactions between anisotropic atoms and bodies that also exhibit anisotropy, either because of anisotropic constituents, or because of geometry. Repulsion occurs for wedge-shaped and cylindrical conductors, provided the geometry is sufficiently asymmetric, that is, either the wedge is sufficiently sharp or the atom is sufficiently far from the cylinder.

24 pages, 14 figures, contribution to the special issue of J. Phys. A honoring Stuart Dowker. This revision corrects typos and adds additional references and discussion

Cited by in corpus (29)

• A Materials Perspective on Casimir and van der Waals Interactions
• Casimir forces on atoms in optical cavities
• The Reality of Casimir Friction
• Classical and fluctuation-induced electromagnetic interactions in micronscale systems: designer bonding, antibonding, and Casimir forces
• Critical Casimir Effect: Exact Results
• The quest for Casimir repulsion between Chern-Simons surfaces
• Casimir force between Weyl semimetals in a chiral medium
• Atom-surface physics: A review
• Quantum Gravitational Force Between Polarizable Objects
• Tunable critical Casimir forces counteract Casimir-Lifshitz attraction
• Impact of anisotropy on the interaction of an atom with a one-dimensional nano-grating
• Fundamental limits to attractive and repulsive Casimir--Polder forces
• Quantum Thermal Machines Fuelled by Vacuum Forces
• Casimir attractive-repulsive transition in MEMS
• Repulsive van der Waals interaction between a quantum particle and a conducting toroid
• Repulsive Casimir force in Bose-Einstein Condensate
• Origin of the repulsive Casimir force in giant polarization-interconversion materials
• Fluctuation-induced Interactions in Micro- and Nano-systems: Survey of Some Basic Results
• Exact results for the behavior of the thermodynamic Casimir force in a model with a strong adsorption
• Geometrical dependence in Casimir-Polder repulsion
• Casimir Pistons with General Boundary Conditions
• Critical and near critical phase behaviour and interplay between the thermodynamic Casimir and van der Waals forces in confined non-polar fluid medium with competing surface and substrate potentials
• Repulsive vacuum-induced forces on a magnetic particle
• High-accuracy Casimir-Polder force calculations using the Discontinuous Galerkin Time-Domain method
• Sign inversion in the lateral van der Waals force
• Exact results for the Casimir force of a three-dimensional model of relativistic Bose gas in a film geometry
• Electromagnetic Casimir-Polder Interaction for a Conducting Cone
• Magnetostatic interaction energy between a point magnet and a ring magnet
• Zeta function for perturbed surfaces of revolution