Casimir repulsion turned into attraction by the nonlocal response of salted water

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that nonlocal ionic responses in salted water convert the expected Casimir repulsion into attraction between silica and gold surfaces, especially at distances around 100 nm.

Contribution

It reveals that nonlocal ionic effects in salted water break the DLP Casimir repulsion paradigm, leading to universally attractive forces at certain distances.

Findings

Zero-frequency contribution dominates at ~100 nm distances.

Nonlocal ionic response causes Casimir force to become attractive.

DLP repulsion paradigm is invalid in salted water at these scales.

Abstract

The Dzyaloshinskii-Lifshitz-Pitaevskii (DLP) theory of Casimir forces predicts a repulsion between two material surfaces separated by a third medium with an intermediate dielectric function. This DLP repulsion paradigm constitutes an important example with many applications. We show here that it is broken when the surfaces interact across salted water due to the nonlocal response of the ions in solution. We consider the interaction between silica and gold and show that the zero-frequency contribution, which is the only one affected by the nonlocal response, is dominant for distances in the range near $100\,{\rm nm}$ and beyond. As a result, the total Casimir force between gold and silica surfaces in salted water is always attractive in spite of the DLP repulsion paradigm.