Axial Casimir force

Quantum fluctuations in vacuum can exert a dissipative force on moving objects, which is known as Casimir friction. Especially, a rotating particle in the vacuum will eventually slow down due to the dissipative Casimir friction. Here, we identify a dissipationless force by examining a rotating parti...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Jiang, Qing-Dong, Wilczek, Frank
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Theoretical Physics
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: American Physical Society 2020
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/125067
Description
Summary:Quantum fluctuations in vacuum can exert a dissipative force on moving objects, which is known as Casimir friction. Especially, a rotating particle in the vacuum will eventually slow down due to the dissipative Casimir friction. Here, we identify a dissipationless force by examining a rotating particle near a bi-isotropic media that generally breaks parity symmetry or/and time-reversal symmetry. The direction of the dissipationless vacuum force is always parallel with the rotating axis of the particle. We therefore call this dissipationless vacuum force the axial Casimir force.