Resonant Photon Tunneling Enhancement of the van der Waals Friction
- 4 September 2003
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Physical Society (APS) in Physical Review Letters
- Vol. 91 (10) , 106101
- https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.91.106101
Abstract
We study the van der Waals friction between two flat metal surfaces in relative motion. For good conductors, we find that normal relative motion gives a much larger friction than for parallel relative motion. The friction may increase by many orders of magnitude when the surfaces are covered by adsorbates, or can support low-frequency surface plasmons. In this case, the friction is determined by resonant photon tunneling between adsorbate vibrational modes, or surface plasmon modes.Keywords
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