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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Casimir effect | 4/6 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T10:54:44.616020+00:00 | kb-cron |
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{\displaystyle {\frac {\langle E\rangle }{A}}=\lim _{s\to 0}{\frac {\langle E(s)\rangle }{A}}=-{\frac {\hbar c\pi ^{2}}{6a^{3}}}\zeta (-3)\,.}
But ζ(−3) = 1/120 and so one obtains
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{\displaystyle {\frac {\langle E\rangle }{A}}=-{\frac {\hbar c\pi ^{2}}{720a^{3}}}\,.}
The analytic continuation has evidently lost an additive positive infinity, somehow exactly accounting for the zero-point energy (not included above) outside the slot between the plates, but which changes upon plate movement within a closed system. The Casimir force per unit area Fc/A for idealized, perfectly conducting plates with vacuum between them is
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{\displaystyle {\frac {F_{\mathrm {c} }}{A}}=-{\frac {d}{da}}{\frac {\langle E\rangle }{A}}=-{\frac {\hbar c\pi ^{2}}{240a^{4}}}}
where
ħ is the reduced Planck constant, c is the speed of light, a is the distance between the two plates The force is negative, indicating that the force is attractive: by moving the two plates closer together, the energy is lowered. The presence of ħ shows that the Casimir force per unit area Fc/A is very small, and that furthermore, the force is inherently of quantum-mechanical origin. By integrating the equation above it is possible to calculate the energy required to separate to infinity the two plates as:
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{\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}U_{E}(a)&=\int F(a)\,da=\int -\hbar c\pi ^{2}{\frac {A}{240a^{4}}}\,da\\[4pt]&=\hbar c\pi ^{2}{\frac {A}{720a^{3}}}\end{aligned}}}
where
ħ is the reduced Planck constant, c is the speed of light, A is the area of one of the plates, a is the distance between the two plates In Casimir's original derivation, a moveable conductive plate is positioned at a short distance a from one of two widely separated plates (distance L apart). The zero-point energy on both sides of the plate is considered. Instead of the above ad hoc analytic continuation assumption, non-convergent sums and integrals are computed using Euler–Maclaurin summation with a regularizing function (e.g., exponential regularization) not so anomalous as |ωn|−s in the above.
=== More recent theory === Casimir's analysis of idealized metal plates was generalized to arbitrary dielectric and realistic metal plates by Evgeny Lifshitz and his students. Using this approach, complications of the bounding surfaces, such as the modifications to the Casimir force due to finite conductivity, can be calculated numerically using the tabulated complex dielectric functions of the bounding materials. Lifshitz's theory for two metal plates reduces to Casimir's idealized 1/a4 force law for large separations a much greater than the skin depth of the metal, and conversely reduces to the 1/a3 force law of the London dispersion force (with a coefficient called a Hamaker constant) for small a, with a more complicated dependence on a for intermediate separations determined by the dispersion of the materials. Lifshitz's result was subsequently generalized to arbitrary multilayer planar geometries as well as to anisotropic and magnetic materials, but for several decades the calculation of Casimir forces for non-planar geometries remained limited to a few idealized cases admitting analytical solutions. For example, the force in the experimental sphere–plate geometry was computed with an approximation (due to Derjaguin) that the sphere radius R is much larger than the separation a, in which case the nearby surfaces are nearly parallel and the parallel-plate result can be adapted to obtain an approximate R/a3 force (neglecting both skin-depth and higher-order curvature effects). However, in the 2010s a number of authors developed and demonstrated a variety of numerical techniques, in many cases adapted from classical computational electromagnetics, that are capable of accurately calculating Casimir forces for arbitrary geometries and materials, from simple finite-size effects of finite plates to more complicated phenomena arising for patterned surfaces or objects of various shapes.
== Measurement == One of the first experimental tests was conducted by Marcus Sparnaay at Philips in Eindhoven (Netherlands), in 1958, in a delicate and difficult experiment with parallel plates, obtaining results not in contradiction with the Casimir theory, but with large experimental errors. The Casimir effect was measured more accurately in 1997 by Steve K. Lamoreaux of Los Alamos National Laboratory, and by Umar Mohideen and Anushree Roy of the University of California, Riverside. In practice, rather than using two parallel plates, which would require phenomenally accurate alignment to ensure they were parallel, the experiments use one plate that is flat and another plate that is a part of a sphere with a very large radius. In 2001, a group (Giacomo Bressi, Gianni Carugno, Roberto Onofrio and Giuseppe Ruoso) at the University of Padua (Italy) finally succeeded in measuring the Casimir force between parallel plates using microresonators. Numerous variations of these experiments are summarized in the 2009 review by Klimchitskaya. In 2013, a conglomerate of scientists from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, University of Florida, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory demonstrated a compact integrated silicon chip that can measure the Casimir force. The integrated chip defined by electron-beam lithography does not need extra alignment, making it an ideal platform for measuring Casimir force between complex geometries. In 2017 and 2021, the same group from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology demonstrated the non-monotonic Casimir force and distance-independent Casimir force, respectively, using this on-chip platform.
== Regularization == In order to be able to perform calculations in the general case, it is convenient to introduce a regulator in the summations. This is an artificial device, used to make the sums finite so that they can be more easily manipulated, followed by the taking of a limit so as to remove the regulator. The heat kernel or exponentially regulated sum is