Eur. Phys. J. D (2016) 70: 95
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2016-60642-7

Regular Article

Controlling Casimir force via coherent driving field

¹ Department of Physics, University of Malakand, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan
² Quantum Optics Lab, Department of Physics, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan

^a e-mail: quantumoptics2000@yahoo.com

Received: 13 November 2015
Received in final form: 22 February 2016
Published online: 21 April 2016

Abstract

A four level atom-field configuration is used to investigate the coherent control of Casimir force between two identical plates made up of chiral atomic media and separated by vacuum of width d. The electromagnetic chirality-induced negative refraction is obtained via atomic coherence. The behavior of Casimir force is investigated using Casimir-Lifshitz formula. It is noticed that Casimir force can be switched from repulsive to attractive and vice versa via coherent control of the driving field. This switching feature provides new possibilities of using the repulsive Casimir force in the development of new emerging technologies, such as, micro-electro-mechanical and nano-electro-mechanical systems, i.e., MEMS and NEMS, respectively.