Katholieke Universiteit Leuven               Francqui Inaugural Lecture                                 August 2, 2013

    The force of nothing:       

Attraction and Repulsion in the Quantum Void
  La Voix des airs   

The Voice of Space: Rene Magritte 1928

Mehran Kardar

Thosten Emig, Noah Graham, Robert Jaffe

Jamal Rahi, Matthias Krüger

Mohammad Maghrebi, Vlad Golyk

Outline

I.        The Casimir force:  From theory, to experiment verification, & technological application

II.      Repulsion/Levitation? Exotic materials (metamaterials); and Shapes (spheres, pistons) 

III.     Earnshaw's theorem in electrostatics and for fluctuation-induced forces

IV.     Thermal disequilibrium: Heat radiation and transfer, levitation and propulsion

V.      Summary and future directions (rotating object)