CC BY
0Casimir energy and Casimir torque in twisted stack of anisotropic
gratings
N. Salakhova1*, S. Dyakov1, N. Gippius1
1- Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, Bolshoy Boulevard, 30, p.1, Moscow 121205, Russia
* Natalia.Salakhova@skoltech.ru
With the miniaturization of modern devices, new physical effects are becoming important. One such effect is the Casimir-Lifshitz force [1,2], which exists between any pair of bodies and increases significantly when the micro- and nanometer distance between them is reached. This force causes the problem of stiction or, on the contrary, can be used to detect small changes due to its sensitivity.
This paper investigates the Casimir force between two one-dimensional lattices of anisotropic material rotated relative to each other. The natural anisotropy of the material and the artificial anisotropy of the one-dimensional lattice lead to the dependence of the Casimir energy both on the rotation between the two lattices and on the angle between the anisotropy axis of the material and the direction of the lattice grooves. In our case, the Casimir energy reaches two local minima and two local maxima when the relative rotation angle changes from 0° to 180°. In comparison, a system consisting of general one-dimensional lattices [3] or plates made of anisotropic material [4] has only two local features: a minimum and a maximum at 0° or 90°. The dependence of the Casimir energy on the rotation angles gives rise to a rotational force called the Casimir torque.
We have shown that the Casimir energy and the Casimir moment depend on both the rotation angle and the lattice spacing, which allows us to establish a correspondence between these parameters. Moreover, this correspondence is determined by the angle with the anisotropy axis.
A twisted stack of one-dimensional gratings of anisotropic material may be relevant for measurement applications in micro- and nano-optomechanical devices.
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[2] E.M. Lifshitz and M. Hamermesh, The theory of molecular attractive forces between solids, In Perspectives in theoretical physics (pp. 329349). Pergamon, (1992).
[3] M. Antezza, H.B. Chan, B. Guizal, V.N. Marachevsky, R. Messina, M. Wang, Giant Casimir torque between rotated gratings and the 0= 0 anomaly, Physical review letters, 124(1), 013903, (2020).
[4] J.N. Munday, D. Iannuzzi, Y. Barash, F. Capasso, Torque on birefringent plates induced by quantum fluctuations, Physical Revi ew A, 71(4), 042102, (2005).
