Casimir-Polder force between anisotropic nanoparticles and gently curved surfaces

• Main Authors: Bimonte, Giuseppe (Author), Emig, Thorsten (Contributor), Kardar, Mehran (Contributor)
• Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (Contributor), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Physical Society, 2015-07-21T13:03:01Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

The Casimir-Polder interaction between an anisotropic particle and a surface is orientation dependent. We study novel orientational effects that arise due to curvature of the surface for distances much smaller than the radii of curvature by employing a derivative expansion. For nanoparticles we derive a general short distance expansion of the interaction potential in terms of their dipolar polarizabilities. Explicit results are presented for nano-spheroids made of SiO[subscript 2] and gold, both at zero and at finite temperatures. The preferred orientation of the particle is strongly dependent on curvature, temperature, as well as material properties.
National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant DMR-12-06323)