卡西米尔力

量子电动力学中的卡西米尔力是真空零点能的体现.广义的卡西米尔力则依赖于涨落介质的类型广泛地出现于物理中,包括量子,临界,戈德斯通模,以及非平衡卡西米尔力.长程关联的涨落介质和约束是产生卡西米尔力的两个条件.本文通过回顾卡西米尔物理的发展,讨论了不同类型的卡西米尔力,几种正规化方法,并对卡西米尔物理的进一步发展做了展望.     

A theory of the Casimir effect for compact regions

We develop a mathematically precise framework for the Casimir effect. Our working hypothesis, verified in the case of parallel plates, is that only the regularization-independent Ramanujan sum of a given asymptotic series contributes to the Casimir pressure. As an illustration, we treat two cases: parallel plates, identifying a previous cutoff-free version (by Scharf and Wreszinski) as a special case, and the sphere. We finally discuss the open problem of the Casimir force for the cube. We propose an Ansatz for the exterior force and argue why it may provide the exact solution, as well as an explanation of the repulsive sign of the force. Received: 7 March 2002 / Revised version: 12 April 2002 / Published online: 14 June 2002     

Finite-temperature Casimir effect in piston geometry and its classical limit

We consider the Casimir force acting on a d-dimensional rectangular piston due to a massless scalar field with periodic, Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions and an electromagnetic field with perfect electric-conductor and perfect magnetic-conductor boundary conditions. The Casimir energy in a rectangular cavity is derived using the cut-off method. It is shown that the divergent part of the Casimir energy does not contribute to the Casimir force acting on the piston, thus renders an unambiguously defined Casimir force acting on the piston. At any temperature, it is found that the Casimir force acting on the piston increases from −∞ to 0 when the separation a between the piston and the opposite wall increases from 0 to ∞. This implies that the Casimir force is always an attractive force pulling the piston towards the closer wall, and the magnitude of the force gets larger as the separation a gets smaller. Explicit exact expressions for the Casimir force for small and large plate separations and for low and high temperatures are computed. The limits of the Casimir force acting on the piston when some pairs of transversal plates are large are also derived. An interesting result regarding the influence of temperature is that in contrast to the conventional result that the leading term of the Casimir force acting on a wall of a rectangular cavity at high temperature is the Stefan–Boltzmann (or black-body radiation) term which is of order T ^d+1, it is found that the contributions of this term from the two regions separating the piston cancel with each other in the case of piston. The high-temperature leading-order term of the Casimir force acting on the piston is of order T, which shows that the Casimir force has a nontrivial classical ℏ→0 limit. Explicit formulas for the classical limit are computed.     

The Casimir force on a piston in the spacetime with extra compactified dimensions

A Casimir piston for massless scalar fields obeying Dirichlet boundary conditions in high-dimensional spacetimes within the frame of Kaluza–Klein theory is analyzed. We derive and calculate the exact expression for the Casimir force on the piston. We also compute the Casimir force in the limit that one outer plate is moved to the extremely distant place to show that the reduced force is associated with the properties of additional spatial dimensions. The more dimensionality the spacetime has, the stronger the extra-dimension influence is. The Casimir force for the piston in the model including a third plate under the background with extra compactified dimensions always keeps attractive. Further we find that when the limit is taken the Casimir force between one plate and the piston will change to be the same form as the corresponding force for the standard system consisting of two parallel plates in the four-dimensional spacetimes if the ratio of the plate-piston distance and extra dimensions size is large enough.     

Casimir Force of Piston Systems with Arbitrary Cross Sections under Different Boundary Conditions

We study the Casimir force between two pistons under different boundary conditions inside an infinite cylinder with arbitrary cross section. It is found that the attractive or repulsive character of the Casimir force for a scalar field is determined only by the boundary condition along the longitudinal direction and is independent of the cross section, transverse boundary conditions and the mass of the field. Under symmetric Dirichlet-Dirichlet, Neumann-Neumann and periodic longitudinal boundary conditions the Casimir force is always attractive, but is repulsive under non-symmetric Dirichlet-Neumann and anti-periodic longitudinal boundary conditions. The Casimir force of the electromagnetic field in an ideal conductive piston is also investigated. This force is always attractive regardless of the shape of the cross section and the transverse boundary conditions.     

Casimir Effect at Finite Temperature in the Presence of One Fractal Extra Compactified Dimension

We discuss the Casimir effect for massless scalar fields subject to the Dirichlet boundary conditions on the parallel plates at finite temperature in the presence of one fractal extra compactified dimension. We obtain the Casimir energy density with the help of the regularization of multiple zeta function with one arbitrary exponent and further the renormalized Casimir energy density involving the thermal corrections. It is found that when the temperature is sufficiently high, the sign of the Casimir energy remains negative no matter how great the scale dimension δ is within its allowed region. We derive and calculate the Casimir force between the parallel plates affected by the fractal additional compactified dimension and surrounding temperature. The stronger thermal influence leads the force to be stronger. The nature of the Casimir force keeps attractive.     

A verification of quantum field theory — measurement of Casimir force

Here we review our work on measurement of the Casimir force between a large aluminum coated a sphere and flat plate using an atomic force microscope. The average statistical precision is 1% of the force measured at the closest separation. We have also shown nontrival boundary dependence of the Casimir force.     

Optical detection of the Casimir force between macroscopic objects

We report the optical detection of mechanical deformation of a macroscopic object induced by the Casimir force. An adaptive holographic interferometer based on a photorefractive BaTiO3:Co crystal was used to measure periodical nonlinear deformations of a thin pellicle caused by an oscillating Casimir force. A reasonable agreement between the experimental and calculated values of the first and second harmonics of the Casimir force oscillations has been obtained.     

The Casimir Effect for Parallel Plates in the Spacetime with a Fractal Extra Compactified Dimension

The Casimir effect for massless scalar fields satisfying Dirichlet boundary conditions on the parallel plates in the presence of one fractal extra compactified dimension is analyzed. We obtain the Casimir energy density by means of the regularization of multiple zeta function with one arbitrary exponent. We find a limit on the scale dimension like $\delta>\frac{1}{2}$ to keep the negative sign of the renormalized Casimir energy which is the difference between the regularized energy for two parallel plates and the one with no plates. We derive and calculate the Casimir force relating to the influence from the fractal additional compactified dimension between the parallel plates. The larger scale dimension leads to the greater revision on the original Casimir force. The two kinds of curves of Casimir force in the case of integer-numbered extra compactified dimension or fractal one are not superposition, which means that the Casimir force show whether the dimensionality of additional compactified space is integer or fraction.     

Casimir force measurement using dynamic holography

The first holographic measurements are reported of the force between macroscopic objects mediated by zero-point electromagnetic fluctuations (Casimir force). A holographic interferometer is used to measure mirror oscillations with an amplitude of 1 pm. The objects under study are two thin metal films deposited on dielectric substrates. When one film is periodically oscillated, the first and second harmonics of the Casimir force acting on the other are detected. For the first time, an order-of-magnitude estimate is obtained for the Casimir force by using radiation pressure as a natural reference scale. The discrepancy between calculated and measured values of the Casimir force may be attributed to the small thickness and low conductivity of the metal films.     

Repulsive Casimir forces

We discuss repulsive Casimir forces between dielectric materials with nontrivial magnetic susceptibility. It is shown that considerations based on the naive pairwise summation of van der Waals and Casimir-Polder forces may not only give an incorrect estimate of the magnitude of the total Casimir force but even the wrong sign of the force when materials with high dielectric and magnetic responses are involved. Indeed repulsive Casimir forces may be found in a large range of parameters, and we suggest that the effect may be realized in known materials. The phenomenon of repulsive Casimir forces may be of importance both for experimental study and for nanomachinery applications.     

Effect of the electric current on the Casimir force between graphene sheets

The dependence of the thermal component of the Casimir force and Casimir friction between graphene sheets on the drift velocity of charge carriers in one of the sheets has been analyzed. It has been shown that the drift motion results in the measurable change in the thermal Casimir force owing to the Doppler effect. The thermal Casimir force, as well as Casimir friction, increases strongly in the case of resonant photon tunneling, when the energy of an emitted photon coincides with the excitation energy of an electron-hole pair. In the case of resonant photon tunneling, the dominant contribution to the Casimir friction even at temperatures above room temperature comes from quantum friction caused by quantum fluctuations. Quantum friction can be detected in an experiment on the friction drag between graphene sheets in a high electric field.     

Casimir Force at a Finite Cut-Off

We calculate the Casimir force at a finite cut-off Λ by summing the forces induced by the all fluctuation modes. We show that the Casimir force is independent of the cut-off function in the limit LΛ → ∞. There is a correction in the order of (LΛ)^-2, when LΛ is finite and large. This correction becomes remarkable when L is comparable with the microscopic length scale Λ^-1. It has been demonstrated that the Casimir force at a finite cut-off should be defined by summing forces of all fluctuation modes, instead of the derivative of Casimir energy with respect to L where an additional derivative of the cut-off function has been introduced.     

Anomalous temperature dependence of the Casimir force for thin metal films

Within the framework of the Drude dispersive model, we predict an unusual nonmonotonic temperature dependence of the Casimir force for thin metal films. For certain conditions, this force decreases with temperature due to the decrease of the metallic conductivity, whereas the force increases at high temperatures due to the increase of the thermal radiation pressure. We consider the attraction of a film to: either (i) a bulk ideal metal with a planar boundary, or (ii) a bulk metal sphere (lens). The experimental observation of the predicted decreasing temperature dependence of the Casimir force can put an end to the long-standing discussion on the role of the electron relaxation in the Casimir effect.     

Casimir Force on a Piston in Randall-Sundrum Models

The Casimir effect of a piston for massless scalar fields which satisfy Dirichlet boundary conditions in the context of five-dimensional Randall- Sundrum models is studied. In these scenarios we derive and calculate the expression for the Casimir force on the piston. We also discuss the Casimir force in the limit that one outer plate is moved to the remote place to show that the nature of the reduced force between the parallel plates left. In the Randall~undrum model involving two branes the two plates attract each other when they locate very closely, but the reduced Casimir force turns to be repulsive as the plates separation is not extremely tiny, which is against the experimental phenomena, meaning that the RSI model can not be acceptable. In the case of one brane model the shape of the reduced Casimir force is similar to that of the standard two-parallel-system in the four-dimensional fiat spacetimes while the sign of force remains negative.     

Experiment and theory in the Casimir effect

Casimir effect is the attractive force which acts between two plane parallel, closely spaced, uncharged, metallic plates in vacuum. This phenomenon was predicted theoretically in 1948 and reliably investigated experimentally only in recent years. In fact, the Casimir force is similar to the familiar van der Waals force in the case of relatively large separations when the relativistic effects come into play. We review the most important experiments on measuring the Casimir force by means of torsion pendulum, atomic force microscope and micromechanical torsional oscillator. Special attention is paid to the puzzle of the thermal Casimir force, i.e. to the apparent violation of the third law of thermodynamics when the Lifshitz theory of dispersion forces is applied to real metals. Thereafter we discuss the role of the Casimir force in nanosystems including the stiction phenomenon, actuators, and interaction of hydrogen atoms with carbon nanotubes. The applications of the Casimir effect for constraining predictions of extra-dimensional unification schemes and other physics beyond the standard model are also considered.     

Bose-Einstein condensation and Casimir effect of trapped ideal Bose gas in between two slabs

We study the Bose-Einstein condensation for a 3-d system of ideal Bose gas which is harmonically trapped along two perpendicular directions and is confined in between two slabs along the other perpendicular direction. We calculate the Casimir force between the two slabs for this system of trapped Bose gas. At finite temperatures this force for thermalized photons in between two plates has a classical expression which is independent of ħ. At finite temperatures the Casimir force for our system depends on ħ. For the calculation of Casimir force we consider only the Dirichlet boundary condition. We show that below condensation temperature (T_c) the Casimir force for this non-interacting system decreases with temperature (T) and at , it is independent of temperature. We also discuss the Casimir effect on 3-d highly anisotropic harmonically trapped ideal Bose gas.     

Attractive Casimir forces in a closed geometry

We study the Casimir force acting on a conducting piston with arbitrary cross section. We find the exact solution for a rectangular cross section and the first three terms in the asymptotic expansion for small height to width ratio when the cross section is arbitrary. Though weakened by the presence of the walls, the Casimir force turns out to be always attractive. Claims of repulsive Casimir forces for related configurations, like the cube, are invalidated by cutoff dependence.     

Casimir Force in a One-Dimensional Cavity with Quasimode

We calculate the Casimir force between a perfect reflective wall and a semitransparent wall in the laser cavity. Using the Fox-Li quasimode theory to describe the electromagnetic field in the laser cavity, the vacuum energy and the Casimir force are calculated. We compare our results to the force in the ideal situation and find it smaller in the dissipative cavity. We also find that the Casimir force decreases with the increase of the wall-wall distance and the decay rate of the quasimodes in the laser cavity.     

Oscillating Casimir force between two slabs in a Fermi sea

The Casimir effect for two parallel slabs immersed in an ideal Fermi sea is investigated at both zero and nonzero temperatures. It is found that the Casimir effect in a Fermi gas is distinctly different from that in an electromagnetic field or a massive Bose gas. In contrast to the familiar result that the Casimir force decreases monotonically with the increase of the separation L between two slabs in an electromagnetic field and a massive Bose gas, the Casimir force in a Fermi gas oscillates as a function of L. The Casimir force can be either attractive or repulsive, depending sensitively on the magnitude of L. In addition, it is found that the amplitude of the Casimir force in a Fermi gas decreases with the increase of the temperature, which also is contrary to the case in a Bose gas, since the bosonic Casimir force increases linearly with the increase of the temperature in the region T < T_c, where T_c is the critical temperature of the Bose-Einstein condensation.