Related papers: The Aladin2 experiment: status and perspectives
Vacuum fluctuations produce a force acting on a rigid Casimir cavity in a weak gravitational field. Such a force is here evaluated and is found to have opposite direction with respect to the gravitational acceleration; the order of…
The Casimir force follows from quantum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field and yields a nonlinear attractive force between closely spaced conductive objects. Measuring the Casimir force in superconducting materials on either side of…
If a fluctuating medium is confined, the ensuing perturbation of its fluctuation spectrum generates Casimir-like effective forces acting on its confining surfaces. Near a continuous phase transition of such a medium the corresponding order…
We discuss the possibility of verifying the equivalence principle for the zero-point energy of quantum electrodynamics, by evaluating the force, produced by vacuum fluctuations, acting on a rigid Casimir cavity in a weak gravitational…
A first order phase transition for photons and gravitons in a Casimir box is studied analytically from first principles with a detailed understanding of symmetry breaking due to the boundary conditions. It is closely related to…
In any medium there are fluctuations due to temperature or due to the quantum nature of its constituents. If a material body is immersed into such a medium, its shape and the properties of its constituents modify the properties of the…
Vanadium dioxide (VO2) is a popular candidate for electronic and optical switching applications due to its well-known semiconductor-metal transition. Its study is notoriously challenging due to the interplay of long and short range elastic…
In this paper we study the Casimir energy of a sample made by N cavities, with N >> 1, across the transition from the metallic to the superconducting phase of the constituting plates. After having characterized the energy for the…
A fundamental prediction of quantum mechanics is that there are random fluctuations everywhere in a vacuum because of the zero-point energy. Remarkably, quantum electromagnetic fluctuations can induce a measurable force between neutral…
The Casimir force, which results from the confinement of the quantum mechanical zero-point fluctuations of the electromagnetic fields, has received significant attention in recent years for its effect on micro- and nano-scale mechanical…
We propose an approach for investigation of interaction of thin material films with quantum electrodynamic fields. Using main principles of quantum electrodynamics (locality, gauge invariance, renormalizability) we construct a single model…
The Casimir effect, a key observable realization of vacuum fluctuations, is usually taught in graduate courses on quantum field theory. The growing importance of Casimir forces in microelectromechanical systems motivates this subject as a…
We present an experimental and theoretical study of the phase behavior of a binary mixture of colloids with opposite adsorption preferences in a critical solvent. As a result of the attractive and repulsive critical Casimir forces, the…
We present a cursory overview of chameleon models of dark energy and their laboratory tests with an emphasis on optical and Casimir experiments. Optical experiments measuring the ellipticity of an initially polarised laser beam are…
An experimental set-up for the measurement of the Casimir effect at separations larger than a few microns is presented. The apparatus is based on a mechanical resonator and uses a homodyne detection technique to sense the Casimir force in…
For the first time we present analytical results for the contribution of electromagnetic fluctuations into thermodynamic properties of modulated systems, like cholesteric or smectic liquid crystalline films. In the case of small dielectric…
This article is divided in three sections. In the first section we briefly review some high precision experiments on the Casimir force, underlying an important aspect of the analysis of the data. In the second section we discuss our recent…
The formation of a submicron optical cavity on one side of a metal-insulator-metal (MIM) tunneling device induces a measurable electrical current between the two metal layers with no applied voltage. Reducing the cavity thickness increases…
The Casimir effect for conductors at arbitrary temperatures is theoretically studied. By using the analytical properties of the Green functions and applying the Abel-Plan formula to Lifshitz's equation, the Casimir force is presented as sum…
We address several different Casimir experiments where theory and experiment disagree. First out is the classical Casimir force measurement between two metal half spaces; here both in the form of the torsion pendulum experiment by Lamoreaux…