Thermal Casimir Effect in the Plane-Sphere Geometry
Résumé
We evaluate the Casimir force between a plane and a sphere at ambient temperature. The material properties are described either by a perfect reflector model, the lossless plasma model or the dissipative Drude model. The results exhibit a rich interplay between the effects of geometry, temperature and dissipation. We give numerical results in a large domain of parameters along with analytical evaluations explaining some striking effects obtained in the limit of large distances. Negative entropies are predicted to occur for all three models, including the perfect reflector model.