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Phys. Rev. A 77, 030101(R) (2008) [4 pages]

Nonmonotonic effects of parallel sidewalls on Casimir forces between cylinders

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Sahand Jamal Rahi1, Alejandro W. Rodriguez1, Thorsten Emig2,3, Robert L. Jaffe4, Steven G. Johnson5, and Mehran Kardar1
1Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
2Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität zu Köln, Zülpicher Strasse 77, 50937 Köln, Germany
3CNRS, LPTMS, UMR8626, Bât. 100, Université Paris-Sud, 91405 Orsay, France
4Center for Theoretical Physics and Laboratory for Nuclear Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
5Department of Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA

Received 13 November 2007; published 13 March 2008

We analyze the Casimir force between two parallel infinite metal cylinders with nearby metal plates using two methods. Surprisingly, the attractive force between cylinders depends nonmonotonically on the separation from the plate(s), and the cylinder-plate force depends nonmonotonically on the separation of the cylinders. These multibody phenomenona do not follow from simple two-body force descriptions. We can explain the nonmonotonicity with the screening (enhancement) of the interactions by the fluctuating charges (currents) on the two cylinders and their images on the nearby plate(s).

© 2008 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevA.77.030101
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevA.77.030101
PACS:
12.20.Ds, 42.50.Ct, 42.50.Lc
 
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