What is the Temperature Dependence of the Casimir Force between Real Metals?

Abstract

The situation with the temperature corrections to the Casimir force between real metals of finite conductivity is reported. It is shown that the plasma dielectric function is well adapted to the Lifshitz formula and leads to reasonable results for real conductors. The Drude dielectric function which describes media with dissipation is found not to belong to the application range of the Lifshitz formula at nonzero temperature. For Drude metals the special modification of the zero-frequency term of this formula is suggested. The contradictory results on the subject in recent literature are analysed and explained.

10 pages, 1 figure, Contribution to the 5th Workshop on Quantum Field Theory under the Influence of External Conditions, Leipzig, Germany, 10-14 Sep 2001

References in corpus (4)

• New Developments in the Casimir Effect
• Temperature dependence of the Casimir force between real metals: problems and approach to their resolution
• Linear in temperature correction to the Casimir force
• Casimir force under the influence of real conditions

Cited by in corpus (6)

• The Casimir effect: Recent controversies and progress
• The Casimir effect within scattering theory
• Violation of the Nernst heat theorem in the theory of thermal Casimir force between Drude metals
• Does the Transverse Electric Zero Mode Contribute to the Casimir Effect for a Metal?
• Surface-impedance approach solves problems with the thermal Casimir force between real metals
• Correlation of energy and free energy for the thermal Casimir force between real metals