RUI: Casimir Forces From Scattering Theory

RUI：散射理论中的卡西米尔力

• 批准号: 1520293
• 负责人: Noah Graham
• 金额: $ 12万
• 依托单位: Middlebury College
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-08-15 至 2018-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1520293&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: RUI; Casimir; Forces; Scattering; Theory

This award funds the research activities of Professor Noah Graham at Middlebury College. Microelectromechanical devices --- tiny machines that can be embedded within an integrated circuit chip --- can trigger car airbags in a collision, detect the movement of a video-game controller or the orientation of a smartphone, sense low air pressure in a car tire, and provide the feedback necessary to stabilize car suspensions and flying drones. As these devices shrink toward sizes of a micron or smaller, a special quantum-mechanical force called the Casimir force will begin to play an important role in their design and function. In contrast to the more familiar electric attraction and repulsion between opposite and like charges, the Casimir force arises from quantum-mechanical fluctuations inherent in Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. While the physical mechanism underlying the Casimir force has been well understood for many years, until recently precise calculations were only possible for the most elementary examples. New techniques, in which the Casimir force is expressed in terms of information about the reflection of light from each individual object on which the force is acting, have greatly expanded the range of potential applications. The research supported by this grant will formulate and implement numerical calculations of this scattering data, making it possible to calculate Casimir forces in a broad range of systems relevant to experimental physics and nanotechnology. These general-purpose computational tools will also be applicable to other problems in science and engineering. Research in this area thus advances the national interest by promoting the progress of science with many potential technological implications. And because this approach is centered around fundamental concepts in quantum mechanics and electromagnetism, it will be possible for undergraduate students to make meaningful contributions to this research at the same time as they build scientific and computational skills that will serve them well in graduate or professional work, both within physics and across a wide range of fields in science and engineering.The technical approach to this problem will be based on the variable phase method, which this research program is applying for the first time to electromagnetic scattering. High-performance parallel computation will make it possible to go beyond objects with a high degree of symmetry to calculate full T-matrices in multichannel scattering, for materials with position- and frequency-dependent dielectric response. These tools will then be applied to calculations of Casimir forces in cases of current experimental interest, such as dielectric gratings with deep corrugations, for which existing techniques based on the Rayleigh expansion are insufficient.

该奖项资助明德学院诺亚·格雷厄姆教授的研究活动。微机电设备——可以嵌入集成电路芯片的微型机器——可以在碰撞时触发汽车安全气囊，检测视频游戏控制器的运动或智能手机的方向，感知汽车轮胎的低气压，并提供稳定汽车悬架和飞行无人机所需的反馈。当这些装置缩小到一微米或更小的尺寸时，一种被称为卡西米尔力的特殊量子力学力将开始在它们的设计和功能中发挥重要作用。与我们更熟悉的异性电荷和同类电荷之间的电吸引和斥力不同，卡西米尔力是由海森堡测不准原理中固有的量子力学波动产生的。虽然卡西米尔力背后的物理机制已经被很好地理解了许多年，但直到最近，精确的计算只可能用于最基本的例子。新技术将卡西米尔力用作用于该力的每个单独物体的光反射信息来表示，这极大地扩展了潜在应用的范围。该基金支持的研究将制定和实施散射数据的数值计算，从而可以在与实验物理和纳米技术相关的广泛系统中计算卡西米尔力。这些通用的计算工具也将适用于科学和工程中的其他问题。因此，该领域的研究通过促进具有许多潜在技术含义的科学进步来促进国家利益。由于这种方法以量子力学和电磁学的基本概念为中心，因此本科生可以在为这项研究做出有意义的贡献的同时，培养科学和计算技能，这些技能将很好地为他们在研究生或专业工作中服务，无论是在物理学领域还是在科学和工程的广泛领域。解决这一问题的技术途径将基于变相位法，这是本研究项目首次将其应用于电磁散射。高性能并行计算将有可能超越具有高度对称性的对象来计算多通道散射中的完整t矩阵，对于具有位置和频率相关介电响应的材料。然后，这些工具将应用于当前实验感兴趣的情况下的卡西米尔力的计算，例如具有深波纹的介质光栅，现有的基于瑞利展开的技术是不够的。