- 21/07/2021
Johannes Fiedler presented nanoLace material at FOMO2021
The role of dispersion forces in matter-wave scattering experiments
Johannes Fiedler (UiB) presented a contribution to the FOMO lecture series (Lectures on Matter-Wave Interferometry) on July 21st 2021.
Abstract: Dispersion forces, such as van der Waals forces between neutral particles or Casimir-Polder forces between neutral particles and dielectric surfaces, are caused by the ground-state fluctuations of the electromagnetic field. They can be understood via an exchange of virtual photons that are generated as a dipole response of the particle due to the vacuum fluctuation of the field surrounding it. These resulting forces are weak for large separations and dramatically increase with decreasing distances. To this end, in matter-wave scattering experiments, where the beam particles reach close distances to the diffracted object, which is typical in the order of a few nanometers, these forces dominate the interaction and have a large impact on the experimental results. In this talk, we will shortly introduce these forces and illustrate their impact on the diffraction of particle beams from porous materials. This is of particular relevance for metastable atom lithography with binary holography masks, currently pursued in the FET-Open project Nanolace.
Link to the abstract:
