Resonant photon tunneling enhancement of the van der Waals friction

Preprint

22 May 2006

preprint
Published by arXiv in arXiv

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.cond-mat/0605524

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 order 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

RESONANT PHOTON TUNNELING
TUNNELING ENHANCEMENT
SURFACE PLASMONS
RELATIVE MOTION
WAALS FRICTION

All Related Versions

Version 1, 2006-05-22, ArXiv
Published version: Physical Review Letters, 91 (10), 106101.

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