Fluctuation-Induced Interaction between Randomly Charged Dielectrics

Monopolar charge disorder effects are studied in the context of fluctuation-induced interactions between neutral dielectric slabs. It is shown that quenched bulk charge disorder gives rise to an additive contribution to the net interaction force which decays as the inverse distance between the slabs and may thus completely mask the standard Casimir–van der Waals force at large separations. By contrast, annealed (bulk or surface) charge disorder leads to a net interaction force whose large-distance behavior agrees with the universal Casimir force between ideal conductors, which scales as the inverse cubic distance, and the dielectric properties enter only in the subleading corrections. ©2010 The American Physical Society