Abstract:
Recently, the topic of Casimir repulsion has received a great deal of
attention, largely because of the possibility of technological
application. The general subject has a long history, going back to the
self-repulsion of a conducting spherical shell and the repulsion
between a perfect electric conductor and a perfect magnetic conductor,
both discovered by Boyer. Recently it has been observed that repulsion
can be achieved between ordinary conducting bodies, provided sufficient
anisotropy is achieved. For example, an anisotropic polarizable atom
can be repelled near an aperture in a conducting plate. Here we provide
new examples of this effect, including the repulsion on such an atom
moving on a trajectory nonintersecting a conducting cylinder.