title: Thermal Casimir effect in the plane-sphere geometry.
abstract: The thermal Casimir force between two metallic plates is known to depend on the description of material properties. For large separations the dissipative Drude model leads to a force a factor of 2 smaller than the lossless plasma model. Here we show that the plane-sphere geometry, in which current experiments are performed, decreases this ratio to a factor of 3/2, as revealed by exact numerical and large-distance analytical calculations. For perfect reflectors, we find a repulsive contribution of thermal photons to the force and negative entropy values at intermediate distances.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, CNRS, ENS, Université Pierre et Marie Curie case 74, Campus Jussieu, F-75252 Paris Cedex 05, France.
authors.forename: Antoine
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Canaguier-Durand
authors.forename: Paulo A Maia
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Neto
authors.forename: Astrid
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Lambrecht
authors.forename: Serge
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Reynaud