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Universal Thermal Radiation Drag on Neutral Objects

Soft Condensed Matter 2009-11-10 v1

Abstract

We compute the force on a small neutral polarizable object moving at velocity v\vec v relative to a photon gas equilibrated at a temperature TT We find a drag force linear in v\vec v. Its physical basis is identical to that in recent formulations of the dissipative component of the Casimir force. We estimate the strength of this universal Casimir drag force for different dielectric response functions and comment on its relevance in various contexts.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0307240,
  title  = {Universal Thermal Radiation Drag on Neutral Objects},
  author = {Vanik Mkrtchian and V. Adrian Parsegian and Rudi Podgornik and Wayne M. Saslow},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0307240},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

7 pages, 2 figures