Effect of Epsilon-Near-Zero Modes on the Casimir Interaction between Ultrathin Films.

Vacuum fluctuation-induced interactions between macroscopic metallic objects result in an attractive force between them, a phenomenon known as the Casimir effect. This force is the result of both plasmonic and photonic modes. For very thin films, field penetration through the films will modify the allowed modes. Here, we theoretically investigate the Casimir interaction between ultrathin films from the perspective of force distribution over real frequencies for the first time. Pronounced repulsive contributions to the force are found due to the highly confined and nearly dispersion-free epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) modes that only exist in ultrathin films. These contributions persistently occur around the ENZ frequency of the film irrespective of the interfilm separation. We further associate the ENZ modes with a striking thickness dependence of a proposed figure of merit (FOM) for conductive thin films, suggesting that the motion of objects induced by Casimir interactions is boosted for deeply nanoscale sizes. Our results shed light on the correlation between special electromagnetic modes and the vacuum fluctuation-induced force as well as the resulting mechanical properties of ultrathin ENZ materials, which may create new opportunities for engineering the motion of ultrasmall objects in nanomechanical systems.

Universal Casimir Interaction between Two Dielectric Spheres in Salted Water.

We study the Casimir interaction between two dielectric spheres immersed in a salted solution at distances larger than the Debye screening length. The long distance behavior is dominated by the nonscreened interaction due to low-frequency transverse magnetic thermal fluctuations. It shows universality properties in its dependence on geometric dimensions and independence of dielectric functions of the particles, with these properties related to approximate conformal invariance. The universal interaction overtakes nonuniversal contributions at distances of the order of or larger than 0.1 µm, with a magnitude of the order of the thermal scale k_{B}T such as to make it important for the modeling of colloids and biological interfaces.

Plane-wave approach to the exact van der Waals interaction between colloid particles.

The numerically exact evaluation of the van der Waals interaction, also known as Casimir interaction when including retardation effects, constitutes a challenging task. We present a new approach based on the plane-wave basis and demonstrate that it possesses advantages over the more commonly used multipole basis. The rotational symmetry of the plane-sphere and sphere-sphere geometries can be exploited by means of a discrete Fourier transform. The new technique is applied to a study of the interaction between a colloid particle made of polystyrene or mercury and another polystyrene sphere or a polystyrene wall in an aqueous solution. Special attention is paid to the influence of screening caused by a variable salt concentration in the medium. It is found that, in particular for low salt concentrations, the error implied by the proximity force approximation is larger than usually assumed. For a mercury droplet, a repulsive interaction is found for sufficiently large distances, provided that screening is negligible. We emphasize that the effective Hamaker parameter depends significantly on the scattering geometry on which it is based.

Microtubule number and length determine cellular shape and function in Plasmodium.

Microtubules are cytoskeletal filaments essential for many cellular processes, including establishment and maintenance of polarity, intracellular transport, division and migration. In most metazoan cells, the number and length of microtubules are highly variable, while they can be precisely defined in some protozoan organisms. However, in either case the significance of these two key parameters for cells is not known. Here, we quantitatively studied the impact of modulating microtubule number and length in Plasmodium, the protozoan parasite causing malaria. Using a gene deletion and replacement strategy targeting one out of two α-tubulin genes, we show that chromosome segregation proceeds in the oocysts even in the absence of microtubules. However, fewer and shorter microtubules severely impaired the formation, motility and infectivity of Plasmodium sporozoites, the forms transmitted by the mosquito, which usually contain 16 microtubules. We found that α-tubulin expression levels directly determined the number of microtubules, suggesting a high nucleation barrier as supported by a mathematical model. Infectious sporozoites were only formed in parasite lines featuring at least 10 microtubules, while parasites with 9 or fewer microtubules failed to transmit.