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SUMMARY:The Thermal Casimir Effect\, Soap Films and the Schrodinger Functi
 onal - Ron Horgan (DAMTP)
DTSTART:20080514T131500Z
DTEND:20080514T143000Z
UID:TALK12211@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Daniel Wesley
DESCRIPTION:In any system consisting of layers of material with different 
 dieletric constants and/or containing different concentrations of electrol
 yte solution there are classical van der Waals forces acting on the interf
 aces\; these are thermal Casimir forces. A classic example is a thin soap 
 film which collapses to the "zero" thickness Newton Black film at critical
  applied external pressure because these forces\, attractive between the f
 ilm surfaces\, overcome coulomb repulsion. I show how to calculate these C
 asimr forces by consdering the thermal fluctuations of the (static) electr
 ic potential field using a quantum mechanical formalism based on the Schro
 dinger functional to evaluate the partition function. Applications to lipi
 d membrane systems such as t-tubules and the effect of surface fluctuation
 s are discussed.
LOCATION:MR2\, Centre for Mathematical Sciences
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