Thermal Casimir force between nanostructured surfaces

TL;DR

This paper provides detailed theoretical calculations of the thermal Casimir force between a plane and nanostructured surfaces, analyzing temperature effects, geometrical influences, and comparing with experimental data.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive scattering theory approach to compute the thermal Casimir force for nanostructured surfaces, highlighting non-trivial geometrical effects.

Findings

Finite temperature significantly affects the Casimir force.

Nanostructuring alters the force compared to flat surfaces.

Comparison with experiments validates the theoretical model.

Abstract

We present detailed calculations for the Casimir force between a plane and a nanostructured surface at finite temperature in the framework of the scattering theory. We then study numerically the effect of finite temperature as a function of the grating parameters and the separation distance. We also infer non-trivial geometrical effects on the Casimir interaction via a comparison with the proximity force approximation. Finally, we compare our calculations with data from experiments performed with nanostructured surfaces.