Related papers: Critical Casimir forces in soft matter
The presence of finite energy in quantum vacuum has profound implications to physics at the microscopic and macroscopic levels. One of the direct consequences of vacuum energy is the Casimir Force, which is a force of attraction experienced…
We study the critical behavior of the free energy and the thermodynamic Casimir force in a $L_\parallel^{d-1} \times L$ block geometry in $2<d<4$ dimensions with aspect ratio $\rho=L/L_\parallel$ above, at, and below $T_c$ on the basis of…
Casimir-type forces, such as those between two neutral conducting plates, or between a sphere, atom or molecule and a plate have been widely studied and are becoming of increasing significance, for example, in nanotechnology. A key…
We propose a method of achieving large temperature sensitivity in the Casimir force that involves measuring the stable separation between dielectric objects immersed in fluid. We study the Casimir force between slabs and spheres using…
Quantum electrodynamic fluctuations cause an attractive force between metallic surfaces. At separations where the finite speed of light affects the interaction, it is called the Casimir force. Thermal motion determines the fundamental…
We study the finite temperature Casimir interaction between two concentric cylinders. When the separation between the cylinders is much smaller than the radii of the cylinders, the asymptotic expansions of the Casimir interaction are…
We study critical Casimir forces between planar walls and geometrically structured substrates within mean-field theory. As substrate structures, crenellated surfaces consisting of periodic arrays of rectangular crenels and merlons are…
We calculate the dependence of the Casimir force on the isotopic composition of the interacting objects. This dependence arises from the subtle influence of the nuclear masses on the electronic properties of the bodies. We discuss the…
Soft materials such as colloidal suspensions, polymer solutions and liquid crystals are constituted by mesoscopic entities held together by weak forces. Their mechanical moduli are several orders of magnitude lower than those of atomic…
Recent experiments have demonstrated a fluctuation-induced lateral trapping of spherical colloidal particles immersed in a binary liquid mixture near its critical demixing point and exposed to chemically patterned substrates. Inspired by…
We develop a dynamical approach to study the Casimir-Polder force between a initially bare molecule and a magnetodielectric body at finite temperature. Switching on the interaction between the molecule and the field at a particular time, we…
Colloidal dispersions are prized as model systems to understand basic properties of materials, and are central to a wide range of industries from cosmetics to foods to agrichemicals. Among the key developments in using colloids to address…
The thermal Casimir effect, arising from fluctuating electromagnetic fields of thermally agitated charges, induces thermosensitive forces and presents a novel approach to detecting nanoscale hot electrons, elusive yet ubiquitous in modern…
Using the critical Casimir force, we study the attractive-strength dependence of diffusion-limited colloidal aggregation in microgravity. By means of near field scattering we measure both the static and dynamic structure factor of the…
The Casimir-Polder force is analyzed when an atom is moving at a constant velocity relative to a collection of translationally invariant macroscopic bodies with generic shapes and compositions. The interaction is described within an…
We demonstrate theoretically that one can obtain repulsive Casimir forces and stable nanolevitations by using chiral metamaterials. By extending the Lifshitz theory to treat chiral metamaterials, we find that a repulsive force and a minimum…
Although Casimir forces are inseparable from their fluctuations, little is known about these fluctuations in soft matter systems. We use the membrane stress tensor to study the fluctuations of the membrane-mediated Casimir-like force. This…
Forces induced by quantum fluctuations of electromagnetic field control adhesion phenomena between rough solids when the bodies are separated by distances ~10nm. However, this distance range remains largely unexplored experimentally in…
The Casimir interaction is induced by electromagnetic fluctuations between objects and it is strongly dependent upon the electronic and optical properties of the materials making up the objects. Here we investigate this ubiquitous…
We report an improved dynamic determination of the Casimir pressure between two plane plates obtained using a micromachined torsional oscillator. The main improvements in the current experiment are a significant suppression of the surface…