Abstract
To obtain a simple picture of the origin of the Casimir force, we begin this section by considering a system of two plane-parallel plates of ideal conductors, following the original Casimir paper [39]. These planes produce a waveguide. The number of electromagnetic modes in the waveguide is discrete and depends on the width of the waveguide. From quantum electrodynamics, it is known that each mode with frequency \(\omega \) has a minimum energy \(\hbar \omega /2\) referred to as vacuum fluctuations or zero point motion.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Volokitin, A.I., Persson, B.N. (2017). The Casimir Forces. In: Electromagnetic Fluctuations at the Nanoscale. NanoScience and Technology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-53474-8_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-53474-8_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-662-53473-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-662-53474-8
eBook Packages: Chemistry and Materials ScienceChemistry and Material Science (R0)