Repulsive Casimir force in chiral metamaterials.
We demonstrate theoretically that one can obtain repulsive Casimir forces and stable nanolevitations by using chiral metamaterials. By extending the Lifshitz theory to treat chiral metamaterials, we find that a repulsive force and a minimum of the interaction energy possibly exist for strong chirality, under realistic frequency dependencies and correct limiting values (for zero and infinite frequencies) of the permittivity, permeability, and chiral coefficients.
Ames Laboratory and Department of Physics and Astronomy, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011, USA.
R
R
Zhao
J
J
Zhou
Th
T
Koschny
E N
EN
Economou
C M
CM
Soukoulis