Casimir force between designed materials: What is possible and what not

C. Henkel , Karl Joulain

We establish strict upper limits for the Casimir interaction between multilayered structures of arbitrary dielectric or diamagnetic materials. We discuss the appearance of different power laws due to frequency-dependent material constants. Simple analytical expressions are in good agreement with numerical calculations based on Lifshitz theory. We discuss the improvements required for current (meta) materials to achieve a repulsive Casimir force.

Domaines: Mécanique des fluides [physics.class-ph]

C. Henkel, Karl Joulain. Casimir force between designed materials: What is possible and what not. EPL - Europhysics Letters, 2005, 72 (6), pp.929-935. ⟨hal-00015774⟩