CASIMIR INTERACTIONS BETWEEN SCATTERERS IN CARBON NANOTUBES Dina Zhabinskaya Eugene J. Mele, advisor In this thesis we calculate interactions between localized scatterers in metallic carbon nanotubes. Backscattering of electrons between localized scatterers mediates long range forces between them. These interactions are mapped to Casimir forces mediated by one-dimensional massless fermions and ...

We calculate the Casimir interaction between two short-range scatterers embedded in a background of onedimensional massless Dirac fermions using a force-operator approach. We obtain the force between two finitewidth square barriers and take the limit of zero width and infinite potential strength to study the Casimir force mediated by the fermions. For the case of identical scatterers, we recove...

In any medium there are fluctuations due to temperature or the quantum nature of its constituents. If a material body is immersed into such medium, shape and properties constituents modify surrounding fluctuations. in same second then — addition all direct interactions between them modifications first influence body. This mutual results force these bodies. excitations which mediate effective in...

The origins and physical significance of the Casimir effect are reviewed, linking the zero-point energy of the vacuum in quantum electrodynamics with a force between conducting plates. It is shown how, by the use of dimensional and other simple physical arguments, the major features of the phenomenon can be derived.

By means of two simple examples: phase and amplitude damping, the impact of decoherence on the dynamical Casimir effect is investigated. Even without dissipating energy (i.e., pure phase damping), the amount of created particles can be diminished significantly via the coupling to the environment (reservoir theory) inducing decoherence. For a simple microscopic model, it is demonstrated that spo...