Date: Friday, 27 March 2009 13:00-14:00
Venue: EM2.33
Name: Dr T. Philbin (Royal Society of Edinburgh/Scottish Government Personal Research Fellowship), St Andrews University
Casimir forces are caused by nothing, literally. The electromagnetic zero-point energy of the vacuum is deformed by material objects, causing forces to appear between those objects. In the last 12 years the study of this effect has been transformed from a backwater of theoretical physics to an active field of experimental and theoretical research. Just this year it has finally been experimentally demonstrated that the Casimir force can be engineered so that it becomes repulsive, leading to the possibility of quantum levitation of objects.
The Casimir effect can be used to rotate anisotropic materials. These developments are of great importance to micro- and nano- engineering, where the Casimir effect is a source of malfunction in devices, and must either be avoided or utilized. We also describe a recent breakthrough in the Casimir force on moving objects and so-called quantum friction.
Thomas Philbin completed his research degrees at Trinity College Dublin and the National University of Ireland. He later held postdoctoral appointments at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, the Max Planck Institute in Erlangen, Germany, and the National University of Singapore. He currently holds a Royal Society of Edinburgh/Scottish Government Personal Research Fellowship at St Andrews. His current research interests are Casimir forces, artificial black holes, and uses of differential geometry in optics.