Casimir interaction between inclined metallic cylinders

Abstract

The Casimir interaction between one-dimensional metallic objects (cylinders, wires) displays unconventional features. Here we study the orientation dependence of this interaction by computing the Casimir energy between two inclined cylinders over a wide range of separations. We consider Dirichlet, Neumann, and perfect-metal boundary conditions, both at zero temperature and in the classical high-temperature limit. For all types of boundary conditions, we find that at large distances the interaction decays slowly with distance, similarly to the case of parallel cylinders, and at small distances scales as the interaction of two spheres (but with different numerical coefficients). Our numerical results at intermediate distances agree with our analytical predictions at small and large separations. Experimental implications are discussed.