Giant non-equilibrium vacuum friction: Role of singular evanescent wave resonances in moving media

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that a singular resonance in moving media significantly influences non-equilibrium vacuum friction, with implications for understanding Casimir-Lifshitz forces in relativistic and lossy conditions.

Contribution

It reveals that a singular evanescent wave resonance dominates vacuum friction between moving plates, extending understanding to realistic lossy and dispersive media.

Findings

Resonance dominates vacuum friction in moving media.

Robustness of the resonance to losses and dispersion.

Implications for relativistic and practical scenarios.

Abstract

We recently reported on the existence of a singular resonance in moving media which arises due to perfect amplitude and phase balance of evanescent waves. We show here that the non-equilibrium vacuum friction (lateral Casimir-Lifshitz force) between moving plates separated by a finite gap is fundamentally dominated by this resonance. Our result is robust to losses and dispersion as well as polarization mixing which occurs in the relativistic limit.