Retardation turns the van der Waals attraction into Casimir repulsion
  already at 3 nm

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Abstract

Casimir forces between surfaces immersed in bromobenzene have recently been measured by Munday et al. Attractive Casimir forces were found between gold surfaces. The forces were repulsive between gold and silica surfaces. We show the repulsion is due to retardation effects. The van der Waals interaction is attractive at all separations. The retardation driven repulsion sets in already at around 3 nm. To our knowledge retardation effects have never been found at such a small distance before. Retardation effects are usually associated with large distances.

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Most cited references 9

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Demonstration of the Casimir Force in the 0.6 to6μmRange

S K Lamoreaux (1997)

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Thermal Effects on the Casimir Force in the 0.1–5μmRange

M. Boström, Bo Sernelius (2000)

The vacuum stresses between a metal half-space and a metal sphere were recently measured at room temperature, in the 0.6-6 &mgr;m range, with an estimated accuracy of 5%. In the interpretation it was assumed that the accuracy was not good enough for observing any thermal effects. We claim that thermal effects are important in this separation range and back up this claim with numerical calculations of the Casimir force at zero temperature and at 300 K, based on tabulated optical data of gold, copper, and aluminum. The effects of dissipation and temperature are investigated and we demonstrate the importance of considering these two corrections together.