Crossover of Critical Casimir forces between different surface universality classes

Understand

In confined systems near a continuous phase transition the long-ranged fluctuations of the corresponding order parameter are subject to boundary conditions.

• These constraints result in so-called critical Casimir forces acting as effective forces on the confining surfaces.
• For systems belonging to the Ising bulk universality class corresponding to a scalar order parameter the critical Casimir force is studied for the film geometry in the crossover regime characterized by different surface fields at the two surfaces.
• The scaling function of the critical Casimir force is calculated within mean field theory.