Repulsive Casimir Force in Chiral Metamaterials

TL;DR

This paper theoretically shows that chiral metamaterials can produce repulsive Casimir forces, enabling stable nanolevitations, by extending Lifshitz theory to account for chirality with realistic material properties.

Contribution

It extends Lifshitz theory to chiral metamaterials, demonstrating the possibility of repulsive Casimir forces and stable levitation in such materials.

Findings

Repulsive Casimir forces are achievable with strong chirality.

Stable nanolevitations can occur due to the repulsive force.

Realistic frequency dependencies support the theoretical predictions.

Abstract

We demonstrate theoretically that one can obtain repulsive Casimir forces and stable nanolevitations by using chiral metamaterials. By extending the Lifshitz theory to treat chiral metamaterials, we find that a repulsive force and a minimum of the interaction energy exist for strong chirality, under realistic frequency dependencies and correct limiting values (for zero and infinite frequencies) of the permittivity, permeability, and chiral coefficients.