Are van der Waals forces the fundamental basis for the Casimir effect?

alxm
Science Advisor
Messages
1,848
Reaction score
9
As I understand it, the Casimir effect is due to the quantized field, and can only be described with QED.
Also, van der Waals forces are supposedly a result of the Casimir effect.

Here's what I don't understand. Supposedly, an accurate solution to the Schrödinger equation - without a quantized field, but rather with instantaneous coulomb forces, does give vdW forces as a long-range electron correlation effect. (This is a important problem in DFT, where most correlation functionals are local and do not reproduce vdW effects)

Would someone more versed in QED care to reconcile this for me?
My working assumption is that that vdW forces are reproduced, but only approximately, with 'c=infinity' then. In which case I'm wondering: How good is that approximation?
 
Physics news on Phys.org
alxm said:
Also, van der Waals forces are supposedly a result of the Casimir effect.
It's the other way around, van der Waals forces are fundamental and Casimir effect results from them. See e.g. https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.03291
 
Insights auto threads is broken atm, so I'm manually creating these for new Insight articles. Towards the end of the first lecture for the Qiskit Global Summer School 2025, Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, Olivia Lanes (Global Lead, Content and Education IBM) stated... Source: https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/quantum-entanglement-is-a-kinematic-fact-not-a-dynamical-effect/ by @RUTA
If we release an electron around a positively charged sphere, the initial state of electron is a linear combination of Hydrogen-like states. According to quantum mechanics, evolution of time would not change this initial state because the potential is time independent. However, classically we expect the electron to collide with the sphere. So, it seems that the quantum and classics predict different behaviours!

Similar threads

Back
Top