Normal and lateral Casimir forces between deformed plates
- Institut fuer Theoretische Physik, Universitaet zu Koeln, Zuelpicher Strasse 77, D-50937 Cologne (Germany)
The Casimir force between macroscopic bodies depends strongly on their shape and orientation. To study this geometry dependence in the case of two deformed metal plates, we use a path-integral quantization of the electromagnetic field which properly treats the many-body nature of the interaction, going beyond the commonly used pairwise summation (PWS) of van der Waals forces. For arbitrary deformations we provide an analytical result for the deformation induced change in the Casimir energy, which is exact to second order in the deformation amplitude. For the specific case of sinusoidally corrugated plates, we calculate both the normal and the lateral Casimir forces. The deformation induced change in the Casimir interaction of a flat and a corrugated plate shows an interesting crossover as a function of the ratio of the mean plate distance H to the corrugation length {lambda}: For {lambda}<<H we find a slower decay {approx}H{sup -4}, compared to the H{sup -5} behavior predicted by PWS which we show to be valid only for {lambda}>>H. The amplitude of the lateral force between two corrugated plates which are out of registry is shown to have a maximum at an optimal wavelength of {lambda}{approx_equal}2.5 H. With increasing H/{lambda} > or approx. 0.3 the PWS approach becomes a progressively worse description of the lateral force due to many-body effects. These results may be of relevance for the design and operation of novel microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and other nanoscale devices.
- OSTI ID:
- 20633680
- Journal Information:
- Physical Review. A, Vol. 67, Issue 2; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.67.022114; (c) 2003 The American Physical Society; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1050-2947
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
AMPLITUDES
BASIC INTERACTIONS
CASIMIR EFFECT
DEFORMATION
DISTANCE
ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELDS
ELECTROMECHANICS
GEOMETRY
MANY-BODY PROBLEM
METALS
NANOSTRUCTURES
PATH INTEGRALS
PLATES
QUANTIZATION
QUANTUM FIELD THEORY
VAN DER WAALS FORCES