Levitation by Casimir Forces?

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.    Repulsion/Levitation?

yellow ball Metamaterials, and invisibility cloaks:     

III.    Repulsion/Levitation?

yellow ball Geometry: ?   

IV.   Earnshaw's theorem:       The Castle      

 red ball No levitation is possible with electrostatic interactions:  

red ball No levitation is possible with Casimir forces with dielectric composites: 

V.     Membranes inclusionse: Forces between inclusions due to membrane concentration fluctuations

                   

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

red ballRepulsion and stability with wedges:                     

yellow ball Experimental demonstrations?

IV.   Out of equilibrium levitation is possible:

yellow ball Classical radiation pressure:                                 Hieronymus-Bosch,-The-Last-Judgement.-Central-Panel-with-Detail-of-Heaven

Acknowledgments

Thosten Emig, Giuseppe Bimonte, Noah Graham, Robert Jaffe

Jamal Rahi, Mohammad Maghrebi

Vlad Golyk, Matthias Krüger

M. Hertzberg, A. Scardicchio, A. Rodriguez, S. Johnson

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