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


Summary

I.      Casimir force:               EM wave  Heisenberg Uncertainty vaccuum fluctuations

                                            Casimir Blobs         Water wave

                  red ball High precision experimental confirmation with scanning probes:      

yellow ball MEM device applications require control of this force (stiction)                         

II.     Repulsion?

yellow ball Metamaterials, als invisibility cloaks:      The Pilgrim

yellow ball Geometry: 

III.   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: 

IV.   Out of equilibrium levitation is possible:

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

                 yellow ball Non-classical (near field) counterpart

V.   Dynamic phenomena: Friction of vacuum!

yellow ball A rotating dielectric will slow down in vacuum:                leftarrow


Acknowledgements

Thosten Emig, Noah Graham, Robert Jaffe

Jamal Rahi, Matthias Krueger

Mohammad Maghrebi, Vlad Golyk

M. Hertzberg, A. Scardicchio, A. Rodriguez, S. Johnson, U. Mohideen, R. Zandi