A Plethora of Fluctuation-Induced Interactions

Summary

I.       Casimir force in QED:       

red ball High precision experimental precision achieved with scanning probes                        

      yellow ball Applications require control of this force, and its shape dependence                                                            

II.     Casimir force of Critical fluctuations:   

red ball Critical Casimir force observed for colloids in a binary mixture    

III.     Casimir force of Goldstone modes:   

              red ball The wetting film of helium becomes thinner

red ball Fluctuation-induced forces from phonons and surface modes        

account for the thinning in the film in the superfluid phase

yellow ball Quantitative theory (including dimensional crossovers) below the (bulk) critical temperature

IV.    Membranes inclusions: Forces between inclusions

red ball Due to membrane shape fluctuations                               

                       red ball Due to membrane concentration fluctuations    

red ballConformal invariance enables computing forces for arbitrary shapes in any critical system.

yellow ball Experimental demonstrations?

V.     Scale-Invariant Shapes:  

red ball Analytical results for the objects with edges (wedge) and tips (cone)   

yellow ball The forces on the cone (AFM tip) are possibly at the edge of experimental sensitivity.

VI.   Entropic Force on Polymers:                                  

red ball Universal force amplitude for scale-invariant shapes related to other polymer exponents

red ballPhantom polymers: Exact exponent

red ballSelf-avoiding polymers: Results from epsilon-expansion

yellow ball Potentially measurable force for multiple polymers.         


Acknowledgements

G. Bimonte, T. Emig, N. Graham, R. Jaffe

Jamal Rahi, Mohammad Maghrebi

R. Golestanian, A. Scardicchio, H. Li, Y. Kantor, J. Rudnik, R. Zandi


Center for Nonlinear Studies                Mark Kac Lectures                    Los Alamos, April 2015