Tunable Casimir repulsion with three-dimensional topological insulators

In this Letter, we show that switching between repulsive and attractive Casimir forces by means of external tunable parameters could be realized with two topological insulator plates. We find two regimes where a repulsive (attractive) force is found at small (large) distances between the plates, can...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPhysical review letters Vol. 106; no. 2; p. 020403
Main Authors Grushin, Adolfo G, Cortijo, Alberto
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 2011
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Summary:In this Letter, we show that switching between repulsive and attractive Casimir forces by means of external tunable parameters could be realized with two topological insulator plates. We find two regimes where a repulsive (attractive) force is found at small (large) distances between the plates, canceling out at a critical distance. For a frequency range where the effective electromagnetic action is valid, this distance appears at length scales corresponding to 1 - ϵ(ω) ∼ (2/π)αθ.
ISSN:1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.106.020403