Structural anisotropy and orientation-induced Casimir repulsion in fluids
Name
McCauley-2011-Structural anisotrop.pdf
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648.34 KB
Format
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Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
McCauley, Alexander Patrick
Rosa, F. S. S.
Rodriguez, Alejandro W.
Joannopoulos, John D.
Dalvit, D. A. R.
Johnson, Steven G.
Date Issued
May 2011
Journal
Physical Review A
Publisher
American Physical Society
Citation
McCauley, Alexander et al. “Structural Anisotropy and Orientation-induced Casimir Repulsion in Fluids.” Physical Review A 83.5 (2011) ©2011 American Physical Society
Version
Final published version
Abstract
In this work we theoretically consider the Casimir force between two periodic arrays of nanowires (both in vacuum, and on a substrate separated by a fluid) at separations comparable to the period. Specifically, we compute the dependence of the exact Casimir force between the arrays under both lateral translations and rotations. Although typically the force between such structures is well characterized by the proximity force approximation (PFA), we find that in the present case the microstructure modulates the force in a way qualitatively inconsistent with PFA. We find instead that effective-medium theory, in which the slabs are treated as homogeneous, anisotropic dielectrics, gives a surprisingly accurate picture of the force, down to separations of half the period. This includes a situation for identical, fluid-separated slabs in which the exact force changes sign with the orientation of the wire arrays, whereas PFA predicts attraction. We discuss the possibility of detecting these effects in experiments, concluding that this effect is strong enough to make detection possible in the near future.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mathematics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
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Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.83.052503
