Long range Casimir force induced by transverse electromagnetic modes

EZEQUIEL ALVAREZ; FRANCISCO D. MAZZITELLI

PHYSICAL REVIEW D - PARTICLE AND FILDS

American Physical Sociey

Lugar: Oak Ridge; Año: 2009 vol. 79 p. 450191 - 450197

0556-2821

We consider the interaction of two perfectly conducting plates of arbitrary shape that are inside a non-simply connected cylinder with transverse section of the same shape. We show that the existence of transverse electromagnetic (TEM) modes produces a Casimir force that decays only as $1/a^2$, where $a$ is the distance between plates. The TEM force does not depend on the area of the plates and dominates at large distances over the force produced by the transverse electric (TE) and transverse magnetic (TM) modes. These geometries provide a physical realization of the 1+1 dimensional Casimir effect. For the particular case of a coaxial circular cylindrical cavity, we compute the TE, TM and TEM contributions to the force, and find the critical distance for which the TEM modes dominate.