The Casimir force between metallic mirrors

Astrid Lambrecht, Cyriaque Genet, Serge Reynaud

Published 2001-05-11Version 1

In order to compare recent experimental results with theoretical predictions we study the influence of finite conductivity of metals on the Casimir effect. The correction to the Casimir force and energy due to imperfect reflection and finite temperature are evaluated for plane metallic plates where the dielectric functions of the metals are modeled by a plasma model. The results are compared with the common approximation where conductivity and thermal corrections are evaluated separately and simply multiplied.