Retarded and nonretarded van der Waals interactions between a cluster and a second cluster or a conducting surface

Abstract

In some respects, a cluster consisting of many atoms may be regarded as a single large atom. Knowing the dielectric properties of such a cluster permits one to evaluate the form of the van der Waals (dispersion) interactions between two clusters or between one cluster and a surface. In this paper, we derive these interactions in two extreme opposite regimes of separation: fully retarded and nonretarded. In the fully retarded regime (very large separation), the magnitude of the interaction is determined by just the static polarizability of the cluster(s). In the nonretarded regime (small separation), we employ a single resonant frequency model of thecluster polarizability to derive expressions for the interactions' coefficients. Numerical examples are presented to demonstrate that many-body screening of these interactions can be significant. The results represent the corrections to the commonly used approximation of pairwise additivity of interatomic interactions.

References in corpus (1)

• Casimir and van der Waals force between two plates or a sphere (lens) above a plate made of real metals

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Static Polarizabilities of Dielectric Nanoclusters
• Efficient calculation of van der Waals dispersion coefficients with time-dependent density functional theory in real time: application to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons
• Time-dependent density functional theory calculation of van der Waals coefficient of sodium clusters
• Spatial correlations of vacuum fluctuations and the Casimir-Polder potential
• Fully retarded van der Waals interaction between dielectric nanoclusters