Casimir effect for thin films in QED

TL;DR

This paper models the Casimir effect for thin films in QED, showing how quantum electromagnetic interactions near the film boundary depend on material properties and can lead to both attractive and repulsive forces.

Contribution

It introduces a unified QED-based model for thin film interactions, accounting for material properties with a single parameter and predicting novel electromagnetic phenomena.

Findings

Casimir force depends on material properties and can be attractive or repulsive.

The model predicts anomalous electromagnetic phenomena.

Scattering and interactions with charges are analyzed within the model.

Abstract

We consider the problem of modeling of interaction of thin material films with fields of quantum electrodynamics. Taking into account the basic principles of quantum electrodynamics (locality, gauge invariance, renormalizability) we construct a single model for Casimir-like phenomena arising near the film boundary on distances much larger then Compton wavelength of the electron. In this region contribution of Dirac fields fluctuations are not essential and can be neglected. In the model the film is presented by a singular background field concentrated on a 2-dimensional surface and interacting with quantum electromagnetic field. All properties of the film material are described by one dimensionless parameter. For two parallel plane films the Casimir force appears to be non-universal and dependent on material property. It can be both attractive and repulsive. In the model we study scattering of electromagnetic wave on the plane film, an interaction of plane film with point charge, homogeneously charged plane and straight line current. Here, besides usual results of classical electrodynamics the model predicts appearance of anomalous electromagnetic phenomena.