engleski

SOME QUANTUM MECHANICAL ASPECTS OF FRICTIONAL FORCE BETWEEN PARALLEL METALLIC SLABS

Energy of a charged or neutral particle (e.g. electron or atom) at rest or slowly moving close to the dielectric surface, e.g. parallel to a metallic slab, is shifted downward, because of its interaction with the quantum mechanical charge density fluctuations in the system via nonretarded Coulomb interaction (at close distances), leading to dynamical image or van der Waals potentials, respectively. Parallel velocity leads to a typical Doppler shifted frequency in the resulting expressions. For higher velocities real electronic transitions in the slab can occur and a moving particle starts losing kinetic energy and parallel momentum. In the last decade much attention has been paid to a similar dissipative phenomenon, namely frictional forces between two dielectric slabs moving at parallel velocity, at zero temperature. In this situation an obvious question can be posed: Is this process physically feasible (since translation symmetry is not broken), and if it is, which mechanism is responsible for friction?

Quantum friction; surface plasmons

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