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Retardation turns the van der Waals attraction into a Casimir repulsion as close as 3 nm

Mathias Boström, Bo E. Sernelius, Iver Brevik, and Barry W. Ninham
Phys. Rev. A 85, 010701(R) – Published 10 January 2012

Abstract

Casimir forces between surfaces immersed in bromobenzene have recently been measured by Munday et al. [Nature (London) 454, 07610 (2009)]. Attractive Casimir forces were found between gold surfaces. The forces were repulsive between gold and silica surfaces. We show the repulsion is due to retardation effects. The van der Waals interaction is attractive at all separations. The retardation-driven repulsion sets in at around 3 nm. To our knowledge, retardation effects have never been found at such a small distance before. Retardation effects are usually associated with large distances.

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  • Received 21 October 2011

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.85.010701

©2012 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Mathias Boström and Bo E. Sernelius*

  • Division of Theory and Modeling, Department of Physics, Chemistry, and Biology, Linköping University, SE-581 83 Linköping, Sweden

Iver Brevik

  • Department of Energy and Process Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, N-7491 Trondheim, Norway

Barry W. Ninham

  • Department of Applied Mathematics, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

  • *bos@ifm.liu.se

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Vol. 85, Iss. 1 — January 2012

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