Introduction
Hendrik
Brugt Gerhard Casimir (1909-2000)
H.B.G. Casimir, Proc. K.
Ned. Acad. Wet. 51, 793 (1948)
Normal modes
of the Electromagnetic (EM) field between (ideal metal) plates:
Quantum fluctuations
of these modes, lead to a zero point energy:
This leads
to a finite attractive force between plates,
Experimental Verification
Early experiments
provided at best qualitative support for an attractive force:
I. I. Abrikosova
and B. V. Deriagin, Dokl. Akad. Nauk SSSR 90, 1055 (1953).
M.J.
Sparnaay, Physica 24, 751 (1958). [Aluminum
plates at distances H>1µm]
The era of
high precision tests, started with S.
K. Lamoreaux 
"Demonstration
of the Casimir Force in the 0.6 to 6µm Range,"
(using a torsion pendulum)
Phys. Rev. Lett. 78,
5 (1997)
U.
Mohideen (and collaborators at UC Riverside), using atomic force
microscopy
"Precision Measurements of
the Casimir Force from 0.1 to 0.9mm,"
U. Mohideen and A. Roy, Phys. Rev. Lett. 81,
(1998)
H.
B. Chan, V. A. Aksyuk, R. N. Kleiman, D. J. Bishop, Federico Capasso,
"Quantum Mechanical Actuation
of Microelectromechanical Systems by the Casimir Force,"
Science 291, 1941 (2001)
G.
Bressi, G. Carugno, R. Onofrio, and G. Ruoso,
"Measurement of the Casimir
Force between Parallel Metallic Surfaces,"
Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 041804 (2002)