Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 111, 10485–10490 (2014)
It is known that the Casimir effect — a manifestation of the quantum fluctuation of electromagnetic fields — typically results in a tiny force. These forces have been enhanced in particular structures, such as closely spaced metal films (mirrors), but they still remain almost immeasurably small. Now, Ephraim Shahmoon and a team from Israel, Austria and Russia, have theoretically proposed that 'giant' Casimir effects should exist in transmission line waveguides where two conductors guide 'one-dimensional' modes. The authors use two different theoretical approaches to calculate the interaction between two dipoles mediated by a TEM mode of the structure. The first approach uses quantum electrodynamics perturbation theory, starting from the interaction Hamiltonian. The second approach involves analysing the scattering of vacuum fluctuations by solving one-dimensional wave equations 'driven' by a fluctuating vacuum field. The team predicts that van der Waals and Casimir effects can be transmitted effectively along the waveguides, and that their strength could be enhanced by several orders of magnitude compared with the free-space interaction, depending on parameters such as the distance between the dipoles. Although the theory includes the approximation of perfect conductors at zero temperature, the authors propose that a superconducting coplanar waveguide experiment could be a candidate for experimentally demonstrating the predictions.
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