Coupled surface polaritons and the Casimir force
Optics
2016-09-08 v3
Abstract
The Casimir force between metallic plates made of realistic materials is evaluated for distances in the nanometer range. A spectrum over real frequencies is introduced and shows narrow peaks due to surface resonances (plasmon polaritons or phonon polaritons) that are coupled across the vacuum gap. We demonstrate that the Casimir force originates from the attraction (repulsion) due to the corresponding symmetric (antisymmetric) eigenmodes, respectively. This picture is used to derive a simple analytical estimate of the Casimir force at short distances. We recover the result known for Drude metals without absorption and compute the correction for weakly absorbing materials.
Cite
@article{arxiv.physics/0308095,
title = {Coupled surface polaritons and the Casimir force},
author = {Carsten Henkel and Karl Joulain and Jean-Philippe Mulet and Jean-Jacques Greffet},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:physics/0308095},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
revised version submitted to Phys. Rev. A, 06 November 2003