Repulsive Casimir Force in Chiral Metamaterials

Understand

We demonstrate theoretically that one can obtain repulsive Casimir forces and stable nanolevitations by using chiral metamaterials.

• By extending the Lifshitz theory to treat chiral metamaterials, we find that a repulsive force and a minimum of the interaction energy exist for strong chirality, under realistic frequency dependencies and correct limiting values (for zero and infinite frequencies) of the permittivity, permeability, and chiral coefficients.