On the heat transfer across a vacuum gap mediated by Casimir force

Svend-Age Biehs, Achim Kittel, Philippe Ben-Abdallah

Published 2020-03-02Version 1

Following a recent report on experiments it has been claimed that a phonon heat transfer through a vacuum gap between two solids due to quantum fluctuations had been measured. Here we make a theoretical analyzis of this mechanism and demonstrate that the Casimir force driven heat flux is at least 15 orders of magnitude smaller than the near-field heat flux between two solids at any given separating distance. Moreover, we provide compelling arguments that the measures reported are no more and no less a measure of the virtual temperatures of vibrating modes which does not allow an access to the Casimir force driven heat flux.