Is Casamir Effect Related to Anti-Matter?

[debra]

I have been reading round the Casamir Effect and Diracs vacuum field.

On the one hand it appears to be a straightforward classical Van Der Waals forces concept related to capillary action and surface tension (duh), on the other hand I read that the Casamir effect is a possible method to produce anti-matter (what??)!

So I am confused.

Any takers to clear this up?

 

[mathman]

I have been reading round the Casamir Effect and Diracs vacuum field.

On the one hand it appears to be a straightforward classical Van Der Waals forces concept related to capillary action and surface tension (duh), on the other hand I read that the Casamir effect is a possible method to produce anti-matter (what??)!

So I am confused.

Any takers to clear this up?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect

It is a result of quantization of the field between the plates. It has nothing to do with anti-matter.

 

[i2000s]

I read some materials arguing on people can use it to produce anti-gravity... Maybe you need to post your original reading materials here, so that we can analyze whether the argument is reasonable or not.

 

[debra]

Yes, it does not seem exotic enough for anti-particles. But reading around the Casamir Effect I came across http://www.mendeley.com/research/antimatter-production-at-a-potential-boundary/

Which states: "The use of the Casimir effect to suppress local vacuum fields is presented as a possible technique for generating the sharp potential gradients required for particle-antiparticle pair creation.

How do they arrive at that conclusion? - it was a funded research suggestion I believe.