How to modify the van der Waals and Casimir forces without change of the dielectric permittivity

Abstract

Abstract. We propose a new experiment on measuring the Casimir force and its gradient between an Au-coated sphere and two different plates made of doped semiconductors. The concentrations of charge carriers in the plates are chosen slightly below and above the critical density at which the Mott-Anderson insulator-metal transition occurs. We calculate changes in the Casimir force and the Casimir pressure due to the insulator-metal transition using the standard Lifshitz theory and the phenomenological approach neglecting the contribution of free charge carriers in the dielectric permittivity of insulator materials (this approach was recently supported by the measurement data of several experiments). It is demonstrated that for the special selection of semiconductor materials (S-or Se-doped Si, B-doped diamond) calculation results using both theoretical approaches differ significantly and the predicted effects are easily detectable using the existing laboratory setups. In the case that the prediction of the phenomenological approach is confirmed, this would open opportunities to modify the van der Waals and Casimir forces with almost no change of room temperature dielectric permittivity.

Measuring the Casimir force gradient from graphene on a SiO2substrate

“…α (iξ l , k ⊥ ) has the meaning of the reflection coefficient on the twolayer (Si-SiO 2 ) structure 26,37,42 where Si can be considered as a semispace. It is expressed in terms of ε Si (iξ l ) and ε SiO 2 (iξ l ).…”

Theory of the Casimir interaction from graphene-coated substrates using the polarization tensor and comparison with experiment

“…II and the standard formulas of the Lifshitz theory describing the reflection coefficients from planar layered structures [2,42,43] …”

“…The gradient of the Casimir force between an Au sphere and graphene sheet deposited on a SiO 2 film covering a Si plate (semispace) was calculated using the Lifshitz formula in the proximity force approximation [2]. For convenience in computations, we use the structures [2,42,43]…”

Apparatus to probe the influence of the Mott-Anderson metal-insulator transition in doped semiconductors on the Casimir effect

“…One then finds [41][42][43][44] that in materials that are insulators at zero temperature, the theorem is violated if the temperature-dependent contribution of thermally excited carriers is included in the permittivity. These findings led the authors of [40] to the following prescription for semiconductors: free charge carriers of doped semiconductors do contribute to the Casimir force if and only if the semiconductor is in the metallic phase, i.e.…”