29 research outputs found
Adsorption Isotherms of Hydrogen: The Role of Thermal Fluctuations
It is shown that experimentally obtained isotherms of adsorption on solid
substrates may be completely reconciled with Lifshitz theory when thermal
fluctuations are taken into account. This is achieved within the framework of a
solid-on-solid model which is solved numerically. Analysis of the fluctuation
contributions observed for hydrogen adsorption onto gold substrates allows to
determine the surface tension of the free hydrogen film as a function of film
thickness. It is found to decrease sharply for film thicknesses below seven
atomic layers.Comment: RevTeX manuscript (3 pages output), 3 figure
Critical Casimir effect and wetting by helium mixtures
We have measured the contact angle of the interface of phase-separated
He-He mixtures against a sapphire window. We have found that this
angle is finite and does not tend to zero when the temperature approaches
, the temperature of the tri-critical point. On the contrary, it increases
with temperature. This behavior is a remarkable exception to what is generally
observed near critical points, i.e. "critical point wetting''. We propose that
it is a consequence of the "critical Casimir effect'' which leads to an
effective attraction of the He-He interface by the sapphire near
.Comment: submitted july 13 (2002), published march 20 (2003
Casimir Force on a Micrometer Sphere in a Dip: Proposal of an Experiment
The attractive Casimir force acting on a micrometer-sphere suspended in a
spherical dip, close to the wall, is discussed. This setup is in principle
directly accessible to experiment. The sphere and the substrate are assumed to
be made of the same perfectly conducting material.Comment: 11 pages, 1 figure; to appear in J. Phys. A: Math. Ge
Identity of the van der Waals Force and the Casimir Effect and the Irrelevance of these Phenomena to Sonoluminescence
We show that the Casimir, or zero-point, energy of a dilute dielectric ball,
or of a spherical bubble in a dielectric medium, coincides with the sum of the
van der Waals energies between the molecules that make up the medium. That
energy, which is finite and repulsive when self-energy and surface effects are
removed, may be unambiguously calculated by either dimensional continuation or
by zeta function regularization. This physical interpretation of the Casimir
energy seems unambiguous evidence that the bulk self-energy cannot be relevant
to sonoluminescence.Comment: 7 pages, no figures, REVTe
Casimir forces in binary liquid mixtures
If two ore more bodies are immersed in a critical fluid critical fluctuations
of the order parameter generate long ranged forces between these bodies. Due to
the underlying mechanism these forces are close analogues of the well known
Casimir forces in electromagnetism. For the special case of a binary liquid
mixture near its critical demixing transition confined to a simple parallel
plate geometry it is shown that the corresponding critical Casimir forces can
be of the same order of magnitude as the dispersion (van der Waals) forces
between the plates. In wetting experiments or by direct measurements with an
atomic force microscope the resulting modification of the usual dispersion
forces in the critical regime should therefore be easily detectable. Analytical
estimates for the Casimir amplitudes Delta in d=4-epsilon are compared with
corresponding Monte-Carlo results in d=3 and their quantitative effect on the
thickness of critical wetting layers and on force measurements is discussed.Comment: 34 pages LaTeX with revtex and epsf style, to appear in Phys. Rev.
The Casimir force and the quantum theory of lossy optical cavities
We present a new derivation of the Casimir force between two parallel plane
mirrors at zero temperature. The two mirrors and the cavity they enclose are
treated as quantum optical networks. They are in general lossy and
characterized by frequency dependent reflection amplitudes. The additional
fluctuations accompanying losses are deduced from expressions of the optical
theorem. A general proof is given for the theorem relating the spectral density
inside the cavity to the reflection amplitudes seen by the inner fields. This
density determines the vacuum radiation pressure and, therefore, the Casimir
force. The force is obtained as an integral over the real frequencies,
including the contribution of evanescent waves besides that of ordinary waves,
and, then, as an integral over imaginary frequencies. The demonstration relies
only on general properties obeyed by real mirrors which also enforce general
constraints for the variation of the Casimir force.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures, minor amendment
Observability of the Bulk Casimir Effect: Can the Dynamical Casimir Effect be Relevant to Sonoluminescence?
The experimental observation of intense light emission by acoustically
driven, periodically collapsing bubbles of air in water (sonoluminescence) has
yet to receive an adequate explanation. One of the most intriguing ideas is
that the conversion of acoustic energy into photons occurs quantum
mechanically, through a dynamical version of the Casimir effect. We have argued
elsewhere that in the adiabatic approximation, which should be reliable here,
Casimir or zero-point energies cannot possibly be large enough to be relevant.
(About 10 MeV of energy is released per collapse.) However, there are
sufficient subtleties involved that others have come to opposite conclusions.
In particular, it has been suggested that bulk energy, that is, simply the
naive sum of , which is proportional to the volume, could
be relevant. We show that this cannot be the case, based on general principles
as well as specific calculations. In the process we further illuminate some of
the divergence difficulties that plague Casimir calculations, with an example
relevant to the bag model of hadrons.Comment: 13 pages, REVTe