Casimir forces in the flatland: interplay between photo-induced phase transitions and quantum Hall physics

TL;DR

This paper explores how photo-induced topological transitions and quantum Hall effects in 2D materials can be used to control the Casimir force, enabling switching between attractive and repulsive regimes with potential for room-temperature applications.

Contribution

It demonstrates the interplay between photo-induced topology and quantum Hall physics in controlling the Casimir force in 2D materials, including a method to probe topology without lasers.

Findings

Switchable attractive and repulsive Casimir forces via photo-induced effects.

Doping allows probing topology without circularly polarized lasers.

Magnetic field enhances thermal Casimir repulsion at room temperature.

Abstract

We investigate how photo-induced topological phase transitions and the magnetic-field-induced quantum Hall effect simultaneously influence the Casimir force between two parallel sheets of staggered two-dimensional (2D) materials of the graphene family. We show that the interplay between these two effects enables on-demand switching of the force between attractive and repulsive regimes while keeping its quantized characteristics. We also show that doping these 2D materials below their first Landau level allows one to probe the photoinduced topology in the Casimir force without the difficulties imposed by a circularly polarized laser. We demonstrate that the magnetic field has a huge impact on the thermal Casimir effect for dissipationless materials, where the quantized aspect of the energy levels leads to a strong repulsion that could be measured even at room temperature.