A microscopic approach to Casimir forces between metal bodies

Abstract

We consider the Casimir interaction between macroscopic metallic objects in terms of the dispersion interactions (Casimir-Polder and van der Waals) between their constituents. Expressions for two- and three-body dispersion interactions between the microscopic parts of a metal are obtained, both in the retarded and non-retarded limits. They are then used to evaluate two- and three-body contributions of the Casimir force between two flat ideal metallic slabs. Our results show the non-applicability of the Hamaker approximation in this geometry. It is further seen that the three-body contributions give an overall repulsive contribution to the force, which is of the same order of magnitude as the attractive two-body contribution of Casimir force.