Noncontact Atomic Force Microscopy - Yale School of Engineering ...

Non-retarded and retarded interactions between dielectric cylinders
Mo-0900
R. Podgornik 1,2 , Antonio Šiber 3 , Rick Rajter 4 , Roger H. French 5 , W.Y. Ching 6 , and V.
Adrian Parsegian 2
1 Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia and Department
of Theoretical Physics, J. Stefan Institute, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
2 Laboratory of Physical and Structural Biology, NICHD, National Institutes of Health, Bldg. 9,
Room 1E116, Bethesda, Maryland 20892-0924, USA.
3 Institute of Physics, P.O. Box 304, 10001 Zagreb, Croatia
4 Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Room 13-
5046 Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
5 DuPont Co. Central Research, Experimental Station, E400-5207 Wilmington, Delaware 19880, USA
6 Department of Physics, University of Missouri-Kansas City, Kansas City, Missouri, 64110, USA
I will present a complete theory of non-retarded and retarded van der Waals
interactions between dielectric cylinders. It is based on the Lifshitz formulation of the
interactions between two anisotropic semiinfinite media as was worked out by Yu.
Barash [1] in the complete retarded case. One then recasts the two semiinfinite media
problem into two anisotropic cylinders problem by expanding the dielectric response
function as a function of the density of the dielectric cylinders that constitute the two
media. The first order in the density expansion yields the semiinfinite plane-cylinder
interaction and the second order term the cylinder-cylinder interaction. Explicit formulae
are obtained for this interaction and the interaction is evaluated for different examples of
ab initio carbon nanotube dielectric response functions. The non-retarded case has
already been discussed in our previous publications [2,3]. I will thus concentrate on the
features of the van der Waals interaction that are introduced by the retardation and
orientation effects.
[1] Yu. S. Barash, Izv. Vyssh. Uchebn. Zaved. Radiofiz. 21 163 (1978). J. N. Munday, D. Iannuzzi, Y.
Barash and F. Capasso, Phys. Rev. A 71, 042102 (2005). Erratum of the paper J. N. Munday, D.
Iannuzzi, Y. Barash and F. Capasso, Phys. Rev. A 71, 042102 (2005).
[2] Rick F. Rajter, Rudi Podgornik, V. Adrian Parsegian, Roger H. French, and W. Y. Ching: van der
Waals-London dispersion interactions for optically anisotropic cylinders: Metallic and
semiconducting single-wall carbon nanotubes, Phys. Rev B 76, 045417 (2007).
[3] Rick Rajter, Roger H. French, Rudi Podgornik, W. Y. Ching, and V. Adrian Parsegian, Spectral mixing
formulations for van der Waals–London dispersion interactions between multicomponent carbon
nanotubes, Journal of Applied Physucs 104, 053513 (2008).
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