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Casimir Force between Dielectric Bodies of Arbitrary Geometry

任意几何形状的介电体之间的卡西米尔力

基本信息

批准号：
EP/E024076/1
负责人：
Ramin Golestanian
金额：
$ 41.8万
依托单位：
University of Sheffield
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Research Grant
财政年份：
2007
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2007 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=EP%2FE024076%2F1
关键词：
Casimir Force between Dielectric Bodies

项目摘要

The progress of nanotechnology in recent years has made it possible to make miniature mechanical devices, and in no time we will be able to make such small machines that are actually capable of performing a variety of functions. This means that we are going to need a new generation of mechanical engineers who are equipped with design packages that know about the mechanical properties of matter and the interactions involved down in nanometre scale. Not only that, the new engineers should also train their ``intuitions'' to know about the non-intuitive world of quantum physics that is ruling in the nano-scale, as it is well-known that in addition to technical skills and creativity good engineers must have very good intuitions too. To develop such knowledge, all we need to do is understand the structure of vacuum and how it interacts with matter. As ironic as it may sound, this is actually true! The reason is that in the quantum world vacuum is not as uneventful as it is depicted to be in classical physics. Instead of being empty, in fact it looks more like a boiling soup of photons (and other particles) that are constantly being created and annihilated ``before we notice.'' When material bodies are placed in such a medium, the so-called quantum fluctuations of vacuum are modified due to their presence, which in turn induces an effective interaction between these bodies. This interaction, which is named after H.B.G. Casimir (who was both a brilliant scientist who cared about the most fundamental issues in theoretical physics as well as a leader of industrial research at Phillips Laboratories), appears to be the dominant interaction in nano-scale. It can make the various parts in small machines stick together inadvertently, while it can also be harnessed and put to good use.A conspicuous feature of the Casimir interaction is that it is not pair-wise additive, meaning that one cannot find a localized force law that can be attributed to small domains of matter interacting from a distance so that when summed up over two larger bodies it will account for the interaction between them. In other words, to work out the interaction between objects of any shape one should start from scratch, and it is not possible to break objects into simpler shapes for which the interactions are known and compile that knowledge to deduce the desired interaction. It is for this reason that developing the kind of design packages that the future nano-mechanical engineers would need, as well as training their intuitions for that matter, is far from being a trivial task. What we are proposing to do here is research that would enable such developments, by providing a deep fundamental understanding of the interplay between geometry of material objects and the Casimir interaction. We will develop theoretical tools that enable systematic calculations of the Casimir force, and will use them to analyse a collection of different cases in terms of shape and dielectric properties. This will unveil various characteristic properties of the Casimir interaction, and could be a key milestone towards the development of the futuristic ``Casimir calculator.''

近年来纳米技术的进步使制造微型机械装置成为可能，而且在不久的将来，我们将能够制造出这种实际上能够执行各种功能的小型机器。这意味着我们需要新一代的机械工程师，他们配备了设计包，了解物质的机械特性和纳米尺度下的相互作用。不仅如此，新工程师还应该训练他们的“直觉”，以了解在纳米尺度上占主导地位的量子物理的非直觉世界，因为众所周知，除了技术技能和创造力之外，优秀的工程师还必须拥有非常好的直觉。要发展这样的知识，我们所需要做的就是了解真空的结构以及它如何与物质相互作用。虽然听起来很讽刺，但这确实是真的！原因在于，在量子世界中，真空并不像经典物理学中描述的那样平静。而不是空的，事实上，它看起来更像一个光子（和其他粒子）的沸腾汤，在我们注意到之前不断地被创造和湮灭。“当物质体被放置在这样的介质中时，所谓的真空量子涨落由于它们的存在而被修改，这反过来又诱导了这些物体之间的有效相互作用。这种相互作用以H.B.G.卡西米尔（他是一位杰出的科学家，关心理论物理学中最基本的问题，也是菲利普斯实验室工业研究的领导者）的名字命名，似乎是纳米尺度上主要的相互作用。它可以使小型机器的各个部件在不经意间粘在一起，同时它也可以被利用和充分利用。卡西米尔相互作用的一个显著特征是它不是成对相加的，这意味着人们不能找到一个局部的力定律，它可以归因于从远处相互作用的物质的小域，所以当总结两个较大的物体时，它将解释它们之间的相互作用。换句话说，要计算出任何形状的物体之间的相互作用，都应该从头开始，而不可能将物体分解成已知相互作用的更简单的形状，并将这些知识汇编起来推断出所需的相互作用。正是由于这个原因，开发未来纳米机械工程师需要的设计包，以及训练他们的直觉，绝不是一项微不足道的任务。我们在这里提议做的是通过对物质物体几何形状和卡西米尔相互作用之间的相互作用提供深刻的基础理解，从而实现这种发展。我们将开发能够系统计算卡西米尔力的理论工具，并将使用它们来分析形状和介电性质方面的不同情况的集合。这将揭示卡西米尔相互作用的各种特性，并可能成为未来“卡西米尔计算器”发展的关键里程碑。