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Phys. Rev. A 71, 042102 (2005) [9 pages]

Torque on birefringent plates induced by quantum fluctuations

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Jeremy N. Munday1, Davide Iannuzzi2, Yuri Barash3, and Federico Capasso2,*
1Harvard University, Department of Physics, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
2Harvard University, Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
3Institute of Solid State Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Institutskaya ul. 2, Chernogolovka, Moscow region 142432, Russia

See Also: Erratum, Publisher's Note

Received 18 October 2004; published 14 April 2005; publisher error corrected 15 April 2005

We present detailed numerical calculations of the mechanical torque induced by quantum fluctuations on two parallel birefringent plates with in-plane optical anisotropy, separated by either vacuum or a liquid (ethanol). The torque is found to vary as sin(2θ), where θ represents the angle between the two optical axes, and its magnitude rapidly increases with decreasing plate separation d. For a 40 μm diameter disk, made out of either quartz or calcite, kept parallel to a barium titanate plate at d≃100 nm, the maximum torque (at θ=π∕4) is of the order of ≃10−19 N m. We propose an experiment to observe this torque when the barium titanate plate is immersed in ethanol and the other birefringent disk is placed on top of it. In this case the retarded van der Waals (or Casimir-Lifshitz) force between the two birefringent slabs is repulsive. The disk would float parallel to the plate at a distance where its net weight is counterbalanced by the retarded van der Waals repulsion, free to rotate in response to very small driving torques.

© 2005 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevA.71.042102
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevA.71.042102
PACS:
12.20.Ds, 07.10.Pz, 46.55.+d

*Electronic address: capasso@deas.harvard.edu

See Also

Erratum: Jeremy N. Munday, Davide Iannuzzi, Yuri Barash, and Federico Capasso, Erratum: Torque on birefrigent plates induced by quantum fluctuations [Phys. Rev. A 71, 042102 (2005)], Phys. Rev. A 78, 029906 (2008).

Publisher's Note: Jeremy N. Munday, Davide Iannuzzi, Yuri Barash, and Federico Capasso, Publisher's Note: Torque on birefringent plates induced by quantum fluctuations [Phys. Rev. A 71, 042102 (2005)], Phys. Rev. A 71, 049904 (2005).

 
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