Giuseppe Bimonte 1 Thorsten Emig 2 Mehran Kardar 3
Physical Review D, American Physical Society, 2015, 92, pp.025028
The Casimir–Polder interaction between an anisotropic particle and a surface is orientation dependent. We study novel orientational effects that arise due to curvature of the surface for distances much smaller than the radii of curvature by employing a derivative expansion. For nanoparticles we derive a general short distance expansion of the interaction potential in terms of their dipolar polarizabilities. Explicit results are presented for nano-spheroids made of SiO$_2$ and gold, both at zero and at finite temperatures. The preferred orientation of the particle is strongly dependent on curvature, temperature, as well as material properties.
- 1. INFN, Sezione di Napoli – Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Napoli
- 2. LPTMS – Laboratoire de Physique Théorique et Modèles Statistiques
- 3. Department of Physics