Casimir Forces between Thermally Activated Nanocomposites

摘要

We present a theoretical study of the modification of Casimir forces between nanocomposite slabs that exhibit a metal-dielectric transition. In particular, we consider slabs made of VO_2 precipitates in sapphire, whose effective dielectric function is calculated within a mean field approximation. The results for the Casimir force as a function of the separation of the slabs, show that at a fixed separation the magnitude of the force changes as temperature increases from 300K to 355K. The possible applications of these results to Casimir devices is discussed.