The Casimir force between rough metallic plates

Genet, Cyriaque; Lambrecht, Astrid; Neto, Paulo A. Maia; Reynaud, Serge

doi:10.1209/epl/i2003-00374-9

Cited by 109 publications

(124 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…An additional source of corrections to the force is the surface roughness of interacting plates. [14][15][16] In all the experiments mentioned above the bodies were covered with metallic films but the optical properties of these films have never been measured. It is commonly accepted 4,7,8,17 that these properties can be taken from the handbooks' tabulated data 18,19 together with the Drude parameters, which are necessary to extrapolate the data to low frequencies.…”

Section: -13mentioning

confidence: 99%

Optical properties of gold films and the Casimir force

et al. 2008

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Take-down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.Downloaded from the University of Groningen/UMCG research database (Pure): http://www.rug.nl/research/portal. For technical reasons the number of authors shown on this cover page is limited to 10 maximum. Precise optical properties of metals are very important for accurate prediction of the Casimir force acting between two metallic plates. Therefore we measured ellipsometrically the optical responses of Au films in a wide range of wavelengths from 0.14 to 33 m. The films at various thicknesses were deposited at different conditions on silicon or mica substrates. Considerable variation of the frequency dependent dielectric function from sample to sample was found. Detailed analysis of the dielectric functions was performed to check the Kramers-Kronig consistency, and extract the Drude parameters of the films. It was found that the plasma frequency varies in the range from 6.8 to 8.4 eV. It is suggested that this variation is related with the film density. X-ray reflectivity measurements support qualitatively this conclusion. The Casimir force is evaluated for the dielectric functions corresponding to our samples, and for that typically used in the precise prediction of the force. The force for our films was found to be 5%-14% smaller at a distance of 100 nm between the plates. Noise in the optical data is responsible for the force variation within 1%. It is concluded that prediction of the Casimir force between metals with a precision better than 10% must be based on the material optical response measured from visible to mid-infrared range.

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Section: -13mentioning

confidence: 99%

Optical properties of gold films and the Casimir force

et al. 2008

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“…For example, it allows to evaluate the force between a plane and a sphere [7] provided the radius R of the sphere is much larger than the mirror separation R ≫ L. It is also valid for the description of the effect of roughness when the wavelengths associated with the plate deformations are large enough [8]. However PFA relies heavily on assuming some additivity of Casimir forces which is known to be generally not valid except for very smooth geometrical perturbations [9].The aim of the present paper is to study a configuration allowing a new test of QED theoretical predictions outside the PFA domain and independent of those already performed in the plane-plane geometry. The idea is to look for the lateral component of the Casimir force which appears, besides the usual normal component, when periodic corrugations with the same period are imprinted on the two metallic plates.…”

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Lateral Casimir Force beyond the Proximity-Force Approximation

Rodrigues¹,

Neto²,

et al. 2006

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We argue that the appropriate variable to study a non trivial geometry dependence of the Casimir force is the lateral component of the Casimir force, which we evaluate between two corrugated metallic plates outside the validity of the Proximity Force Approximation (PFA). The metallic plates are described by the plasma model, with arbitrary values for the plasma wavelength, the plate separation and the corrugation period, the corrugation amplitude remaining the smallest length scale. Our analysis shows that in realistic experimental situations the Proximity Force Approximation overestimates the force by up to 30%.Considerable experimental progress has been achieved [1] in the measurement of the Casimir force, opening the way for various applications in nano-science [2], particularly in the development of nano-or micro-electromechanical systems (NEMS or MEMS). Calculations are much simpler in the original Casimir geometry of two plane plates [3] which obeys a symmetry with respect to lateral translations and thus allows to derive the expression of the Casimir force from the reflection amplitudes which describe specular scattering on the plates [4].More general geometries open a far richer physics with a variety of extremely interesting theoretical predictions [5]. Up to now the experimental studies of the effect of geometry have been restricted to simple configurations which can be calculated with the help of the Proximity Force Approximation (PFA). This approximation is essentially equivalent to an averaging over plane-plane geometries and its result can be deduced from the force known in this geometry [6]. For example, it allows to evaluate the force between a plane and a sphere [7] provided the radius R of the sphere is much larger than the mirror separation R ≫ L. It is also valid for the description of the effect of roughness when the wavelengths associated with the plate deformations are large enough [8]. However PFA relies heavily on assuming some additivity of Casimir forces which is known to be generally not valid except for very smooth geometrical perturbations [9].The aim of the present paper is to study a configuration allowing a new test of QED theoretical predictions outside the PFA domain and independent of those already performed in the plane-plane geometry. The idea is to look for the lateral component of the Casimir force which appears, besides the usual normal component, when periodic corrugations with the same period are imprinted on the two metallic plates. This configuration contrasts with other ones, for example the normal Casimir force in the plane-sphere geometry or roughness corrections to it. There PFA can also be invalid, but this leads only to small corrections of the dominant normal Casimir force, which do not seem accessible experimentally at the moment. The lateral component of the Casimir force has recently been measured and analyzed within the PFA [10,11]. We find for experimentally realizable parameters that PFA overestimates the force by as much as 30%, which should allow for a ...

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“…While the effective medium description is in general quite satisfactory for describing dense materials that indeed look homogenous at the typical scales of the Casimir force, this is not necessarily the case for strongly heterogeneous ("disordered") media that are made of many constituting elements ("scatterers") well separated from one another. Examples of such heterogeneous systems include nanoporous materials [21], clouds of cold atoms [22] and, in a slightly different context, corrugated surfaces [23,24].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Statistical approach to Casimir-Polder potentials in heterogeneous media

2015

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We explore the statistical properties of the Casimir-Polder potential between a dielectric sphere and a three-dimensional heterogeneous medium, by means of extensive numerical simulations based on the scattering theory of Casimir forces. The simulations allow us to confirm recent predictions for the mean and standard deviation of the Casimir potential, and give us access to its full distribution function in the limit of a dilute distribution of heterogeneities. These predictions are compared with a simple statistical model based on a pairwise summation of the individual contributions of the constituting elements of the medium.

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The Casimir force between rough metallic plates

Cited by 109 publications

References 21 publications

Optical properties of gold films and the Casimir force

Optical properties of gold films and the Casimir force

Lateral Casimir Force beyond the Proximity-Force Approximation

Statistical approach to Casimir-Polder potentials in heterogeneous media

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