Undergrad "Breaking the loop" in Casimir force?

[Swamp Thing]

The Casimir force involves a complicated interaction between electrons in one plate, the electromagnetic field in the gap, and the electrons in the other plate. In this process, it makes no sense to talk of cause and effect, since all entities affect each other all the time.

Would it make sense to imagine a thought experiment where we try to do a "man in the middle" trick, so to speak? Let's consider one single frequency and mode that is known to contribute to the attractive force. We know the associated field pattern that would exist at the surface of plate A. Can we just get rid of plate B, and substitute a "smart antenna" that would project the same field pattern onto the surface of plate A?

Presumably, this model would predict the same force as before, which would, of course, be minuscule. But now we can ramp up the intensity (photon number) of the applied field and achieve arbitrarily strong forces.

One assumption here is that each frequency and mode interacts with the metal independently of all others. This seems reasonable to me, but is it true? Another assumption is that the force would increase monotonically as we ramp up the field, which also seems reasonable. Any thoughts?

 

[trurle]

Most likely you will be unable to do the substitution with far-field antenna because "smart antenna" would have "Poynting vector" pointing from the inside of plate A.