[NewCandle] Chiral metamaterial for repulsive casimir force.

[Horace Heffner]

On Nov 18, 2009, at 8:24 AM, Keith Nagel wrote:

> Hey Horace, I've been thinking about your comments
> regarding real vs virtual photons. Let me try
> to rephrase the arguments against a ZPF radiometer
> in terms of energy.
>
> In the case of ordinary materials, a pair of plates
> with a thin gap will only allow a harmonic range
> of virtual photon frequencies inside the gap, with
> a full range outside. Because the vacuum energy inside
> the gap is smaller than outside, the plates press towards each
> other.
>
> A pair of plates composed of the claimed metamaterial
> would create _greater_ virtual photon energy inside the gap
> than outside, and would act as a concentrator
> of ZPF rather than an excluder. The resulting
> force would cause the plates to repel. This perhaps is
> a problem for thermodynamics, but I do see some
> other ref's to repulsive casimir forces so maybe in
> practice this is not a problem or the repulsion
> is described in some other way?
>
> In a gap of ordinary material and metamaterial,
> would the vacuum energy reducing effect of the ordinary
> material be canceled by the gain effect from
> the metamaterial? By constraining the function
> describing the gain in this way, we get zero
> net motion of the whole assembly. I don't have
> access to the first paper ( here's the abstract )
>
> http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet? 
> prog=normal&id=PRLTAO0
> 00103000010103602000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes
>
> to know how they describe the repulsive force to
> prove out the argument. Does it seem right?
>
> K.


Not enough info to tell, but offhand I expect it is more of the  
same.  I'm no expert on this, so I sure would like to see at least  
one experimental result that shows any unusual interaction of  
metamaterial with the Casimir force.   So far it appears to be all  
theory.

Best regards,

Horace Heffner
http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/