Thermodynamic Casimir Forces between a Sphere and a Plate: Monte Carlo Simulation of a Spin Model

TL;DR

This paper investigates the thermodynamic Casimir force between a sphere and a plate within the 3D Ising universality class, using Monte Carlo simulations of an improved spin model to compare with theoretical approximations.

Contribution

It introduces an efficient cluster algorithm for computing energy differences and applies it to simulate Casimir forces, bridging numerical results with theoretical predictions.

Findings

Numerical results agree with Derjaguin approximation at small distances.

Results align with small sphere expansion at large distances.

Efficient computation method for energy differences in Monte Carlo simulations.

Abstract

We study the thermodynamic Casimir force between a spherical object and a plate. We consider the bulk universality class of the three-dimensional Ising model, which is relevant for experiments on binary mixtures. To this end, we simulate the improved Blume-Capel model. Following Hucht, we compute the force by integrating energy differences over the inverse temperature. We demonstrate that these energy differences can be computed efficiently by using a particular cluster algorithm. Our numerical results for strongly symmetry breaking boundary conditions are compared with the Derjaguin approximation for small distances and the small sphere expansion for large distances between the sphere and the plate.