Casimir pistons are models in which finite Casimir forces can be calculated without any suspect renormalizations. It has been suggested that such forces are always attractive, but we present several counterexamples, notably a simple type of quantum graph in which the sign of the force depends upon the number of edges. We also show that Casimir forces in quantum graphs can be reliably computed b...

We demonstrate that the static ground state atom, which interacts with a conformally coupled massless scalar field in the de Sitter invariant vacuum, can obtain a position-dependent energy-level shift and this shift could cause a Casimir-Polder-like force on it. Interestingly no such force arises on the inertial atom bathed in a thermal radiation in the Minkowski universe. Thus, although the en...

– We study the torque arising between two corrugated metallic plates due to the interaction with electromagnetic vacuum. This Casimir torque can be measured with torsion pendulum techniques for separation distances as large as 1μm. It allows one to probe the nontrivial geometry dependence of the Casimir energy in a configuration which can be evaluated theoretically with accuracy. In the optimal...

Hydrogen switchable mirrors (HSMs) are shiny metals that become optically transparent upon exposure to hydrogen. The Casimir force between HSMs is thus supposed to be stronger in air than in hydrogen. A few years ago, an experiment designed to measure this effect gave an unexpected result (Iannuzzi, Lisanti and Capasso 2004 Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 101 4019–23): no change of the force was obse...

We demonstrate that, according to a recently suggested Lorentz-force approach to the Casimir effect, the vacuum force on an atom embedded in a material cavity differs substantially from the force on an atom of the cavity medium. The force on an embedded atom is of the familiar (van der Waals and Casimir-Polder) type, however, more strongly modified by the cavity medium than usually considered. ...

We review recent results obtained in the physics of the thermal Casimir force acting between two dielectrics, dielectric and metal, and between metal and semiconductor. The detailed derivation for the low-temperature behavior of the Casimir free energy, pressure and entropy in the configuration of two real dielectric plates is presented. For dielectrics with finite static dielectric permittivit...

We study interactions between localized scatterers on metallic carbon nanotubes by a mapping onto a onedimensional Casimir problem. Backscattering of electrons between localized scattering potentials mediates long-range forces between them. We model spatially localized scatterers by local and nonlocal potentials and treat simultaneously the effects of intravalley and intervalley backscattering....

From the SU(2) and SU(3) lattice QCD studies of the static potential between color charges in various dimensional representations, there arises the Casimir scaling hypothesis for the intermediate distance force [ 1, 2, 3]. This hypothesis tells that the ratio of forces associated with various dimensional representations of color charges, for a given color group, is determined by that of eigenva...

– The Casimir force between two metallic plates is affected by their roughness state. This effect is usually calculated through the so-called 'proximity force approximation' which is only valid for small enough wavevectors in the spectrum of the roughness profile. We introduce here a more general description with a wavevector-dependent roughness sensitivity of the Casimir effect. Since the prox...