Historical research guide · 0419 · 2009
Advances in the Casimir Effect
Michael Bordag · Galina L. Klimchitskaya · Umar Mohideen · Vladimir M. Mostepanenko
In one minute
Michael Bordag, Galina Klimchitskaya, Umar Mohideen and Vladimir Mostepanenko wrote the standard reference on the Casimir effect: the force that appears between two closely spaced bodies because the quantum vacuum’s zero-point oscillations cannot fit the same way inside the gap as outside it. Three of the authors are theorists and one is an experimentalist, and the book is built that way — first the field theory, then that theory adapted to real materials with real reflectivity at real temperature, then every precise measurement made up to 2009 set beside the predictions. Their verdict in the closing chapter is that theory and experiment now agree very well, once the theory is written for real boundaries rather than ideal mirrors. Along the way they set out how the infinite parts of vacuum energy are removed, why the plasma model of a metal satisfies thermodynamics where the Drude model does not, how the force already drives micromechanical devices, and how tightly it constrains proposed new forces beyond the Standard Model.
Connection
Chapter 2 rests on the Casimir force being real, measured and calculable, and this is the book that shows it in full — a critical assessment of the theory, the materials and every experiment up to 2009. For chapter 6 it supplies the engineering precedent the vacuum-energy programmes are built on: micromechanical devices already actuated by a force of purely vacuum origin.
From the source
The Casimir effect is a manifestation of zero-point oscillations of the quantum vacuum in the form of forces acting between closely spaced bodies; it is a purely quantum effect, since no force acts between neutral bodies in classical electrodynamics, and between material boundaries it can be interpreted simply as a retarded van der Waals force.Book abstract, and Chapter 1, Introduction, pages 1 to 14
The divergent part of the vacuum energy is separated using heat-kernel expansion with cutoff regularization, and the divergent contributions are then removed by redefining the parameters of the non-interacting theory; where background fields are singular, or made singular by a limiting process, these questions are not completely settled.Chapter 4, Regularization and Renormalization of the Vacuum Energy, pages 55 to 72
A series of precise indirect measurements of the Casimir pressure using a micromechanical torsional oscillator allowed a definitive choice between the competing theoretical approaches to the thermal Casimir force for real metal surfaces.Chapter 19, Measurements of the Casimir Force Between Metals, pages 530 to 580
Combined with the Lifshitz formula, the plasma model of a metal agrees with thermodynamics where the Drude model does not if the crystal lattice is perfect, and the generalized plasma-like permittivity is likewise thermodynamically consistent.Chapter 14, The Casimir Interaction Between Real Metals at Nonzero Temperature, pages 351 to 400
Measurements of the Casimir force give the strongest constraints at the shortest separations on the long-range interactions between neutral bodies predicted by extensions to the Standard Model, and in a few years strengthened the known limits on submicrometre Yukawa interactions by up to ten thousand times.Chapter 24, Constraints on Hypothetical Interactions from the Casimir Effect, pages 682 to 697
As device dimensions shrink to nanometres the Casimir force plays a recognised role in nanoscale machines; the book analyses the first microelectromechanical system actuated by the Casimir force and a nonlinear micromechanical Casimir oscillator.Chapter 23, Applications of the Casimir Force in Nanotechnology, pages 655 to 681
The way in
https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199238743.001.0001How to cite it
Michael Bordag, Galina L. Klimchitskaya, Umar Mohideen, Vladimir M. Mostepanenko (2009) Advances in the Casimir Effect doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199238743.001.0001