Chiral Casimir Forces: Repulsive, Enhanced, Tunable

Both theoretical interest and practical significance attach to the sign and strength of Casimir forces. A famous, discouraging no-go theorem states that "The Casimir force between two bodies with reflection symmetry is always attractive." Here we identify a loophole in the reasoning, and propose a universal way to realize repulsive Casimir forces. We show that the sign and strength of Casimir forces can be adjusted by inserting optically active or gyrotropic media between bodies, and modulated by external fields.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figure

Axial Casimir Force

Quantum fluctuations in vacuum can exert a dissipative force on moving objects, which is known as Casimir friction. Especially, a rotating particle in the vacuum will eventually slow down due to the dissipative Casimir friction. Here, we identify a dissipationless force by examining a rotating particle near a bi-isotropic media that generally breaks parity symmetry or/and time-reversal symmetry. The direction of the dissipationless vacuum force is always parallel with the rotating axis of the particle. We therefore call this dissipationless vacuum force the axial Casimir force.Comment: improved main text and appendice

Microfluidic polymerase chain reaction

We implement microfluidic technology to miniaturize a thermal cycling system for amplifying DNA fragments. By using a microfluidic thermal heat exchanger to cool a Peltier junction, we have demonstrated rapid heating and cooling of small volumes of solution. We use a miniature K-type thermocouple to provide a means for in situ sensing of the temperature inside the microrefrigeration system. By combining the thermocouple, two power supplies controlled by a relay system, and computer automation, we reproduce the function of a commercial polymerase chain reaction thermal cycler and demonstrate amplification of a DNA sample of about 1000 base pairs