Thermal Casimir force between nanostructured surfaces

Abstract

We present detailed calculations for the Casimir force between a plane and a nanostructured surface at finite temperature in the framework of the scattering theory. We then study numerically the effect of finite temperature as a function of the grating parameters and the separation distance. We also infer non-trivial geometrical effects on the Casimir interaction via a comparison with the proximity force approximation. Finally, we compare our calculations with data from experiments performed with nanostructured surfaces