Regimes of the lateral van der Waals force in the presence of dielectrics

Abstract

In a recent paper, it was shown that, under the action of the lateral van der Waals (vdW) force due to a perfectly conducting corrugated surface, a neutral anisotropic polarizable particle in vacuum can be attracted not only to the nearest corrugation peak, but also to a valley, or an intermediate point between a peak and a valley, with such behaviors called peak, valley and intermediate regimes, respectively. In the present paper, we investigate how these regimes are affected by the consideration of two non-dispersive semi-infinite dielectrics ${\epsilon }_1$ and ${\epsilon }_2$, separated by a corrugated interface. Specifically, we study the vdW interaction between a neutral anisotropic polarizable particle, embedded in the dielectric ${\epsilon }_2$, and the dielectric ${\epsilon }_1$. We show that when ${\epsilon }_2<{\epsilon }_1$ the peak, valley and intermediate regimes have, unless numerical factors, behaviors similar to those found for the situation where the particle is in vacuum and interacting with a conducting medium. For the case ${\epsilon }_2>{\epsilon }_1$, one might expect a mere permute between the peak and valley regimes, in comparison to the case ${\epsilon }_2<{\epsilon }_1$. Surprisingly, we find that when ${\epsilon }_2>{\epsilon }_1$ the regimes exhibit a very different and nontrivial behavior. Moreover, we show that similar regimes arise in the classical case involving a neutral polarized particle. The description of how the peak, valley and intermediate regimes are affected by the presence of dielectrics may be relevant for a better understanding of the interaction between anisotropic particles and corrugated surfaces.

11 pages, 9 figures

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Cited by in corpus (2)

• Sign inversion in the lateral van der Waals force
• Sign inversion in the lateral van der Waals force between an anisotropic particle and a plane with a hemispherical protuberance: an exact calculation