Suspended graphene films and their Casimir interaction with ideal conductor

TL;DR

This paper calculates the Casimir interaction between suspended graphene and an ideal conductor using Dirac model, revealing a weak but measurable force strongly dependent on graphene's quasi-particle mass.

Contribution

It introduces a combined QFT and Lifshitz approach to quantify Casimir forces involving graphene, highlighting the influence of quasi-particle mass.

Findings

Casimir interaction is weak but measurable

Interaction strength depends strongly on quasi-particle mass

QFT approach is more accurate at leading order

Abstract

We adopt the Dirac model for graphene and calculate the Casimir interaction energy between a plane suspended graphene sample and a parallel plane ideal conductor. We employ both the Quantum Field Theory (QFT) approach, and the Lifshitz formula generalizations. The first approach turns out to be the leading order in the coupling constant of the second one. The Casimir interaction for this system appears to be rather weak but experimentally measurable. It exhibits a strong dependence on the mass of the quasi-particles in graphene.