Thermal Casimir effect in the plane-sphere geometry

The thermal Casimir force between two metallic plates is known to depend on the description of material properties. For large separations the dissipative Drude model leads to a force a factor of 2 smaller than the lossless plasma model. Here we show that the plane-sphere geometry, in which current e...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPhysical review letters Vol. 104; no. 4; p. 040403
Main Authors Canaguier-Durand, Antoine, Neto, Paulo A Maia, Lambrecht, Astrid, Reynaud, Serge
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 29.01.2010
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Summary:The thermal Casimir force between two metallic plates is known to depend on the description of material properties. For large separations the dissipative Drude model leads to a force a factor of 2 smaller than the lossless plasma model. Here we show that the plane-sphere geometry, in which current experiments are performed, decreases this ratio to a factor of 3/2, as revealed by exact numerical and large-distance analytical calculations. For perfect reflectors, we find a repulsive contribution of thermal photons to the force and negative entropy values at intermediate distances.
ISSN:1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.104.040403