Fluctuation-Induced Interactions

in and out of equilibrium
 

Summary

I.       Casimir force in QED:       

 High precision experimental precision achieved with scanning probes                        

       Applications require control of this force, and its shape dependence                                                            

II.      Thermal Casimir force:   

 Critical Casimir force observed for colloids in a binary mixture    

               The wetting film of helium becomes thinner

III.    Plethora of FIF: Goldstone modes, membranes, polymers, ...

 Fluctuation-induced forces from phonons and surface modes        

account for the thinning in the film in the superfluid phase

 Due to membrane shape fluctuations                               

                        Due to membrane concentration fluctuations    

Conformal invariance enables computing forces for arbitrary shapes in any critical system.

 Experimental demonstrations?

IV.    Non-equilibrium FIF: QED, Thermal and density gradients, ... ?

Acknowledgements

G. Bimonte, T. Emig, N. Graham, R. Jaffe

R. Golestanian, H.Li, Y. Kafri, Y. Kantor, J. Rudnik, R. Zandi

Jamal Rahi, Mohammad Maghrebi

Next (Introduction) Outline Casimir force in QED Thermal Casimir Plethora of FIF Non-equilibrium FIF Summary