The Casimir force for passive mirrors

Astrid Lambrecht (1) , Marc-Thierry Jaekel (2) , Serge Reynaud (1)

1 LKB (Jussieu) - Laboratoire Kastler Brossel
2 LPTENS - Laboratoire de Physique Théorique de l'ENS [École Normale Supérieure]

We show that the Casimir force between mirrors with arbitrary frequency dependent reflectivities obeys bounds due to causality and passivity properties. The force is always smaller than the Casimir force between two perfectly reflecting mirrors. For narrow-band mirrors in particular, the force is found to decrease with the mirrors bandwidth.

Domaines: Physique Quantique [quant-ph]

Astrid Lambrecht, Marc-Thierry Jaekel, Serge Reynaud. The Casimir force for passive mirrors. Physics Letters A, 1997, 225, pp.188-194. ⟨hal-00002483⟩