Demonstration of non-additivity and asymmetry in the lateral Casimir force

The Casimir effect is a purely quantum mechanical phenomenon which has drawn extensive attention in the last decade. With the rapid development of modern scientific instruments, it has been demonstrated and measured with unprecedented precision. Because of its unique dependence on the separation and geometry, the Casimir force is expected to play an important role in modern nano-electro-mechanical systems.;An understanding of the shape dependence of the Casimir force and its control has become a very important research topic for the future nano-technology. Since the demonstration of the lateral Casimir force in 2002 at UC Riverside, this special effect has inspired a lot of theoretical research. The asymmetry of the lateral Casimir has been predicted and exact theories which take into account diffraction-like correlation effect between the scattered zero point photons from the boundaries have been proposed. We improved the experimental setup and experimental conditions (grating period of order of the separation distance) to study these new phenomenon.;In this research, we demonstrate the asymmetrical lateral Casimir force for the first time. The experimental results show very good agreement with a recently developed exact theory based on the scattering approach with no tting parameters. The measured force also show the expected deviation from the commonly used proximity force approximation. The results provide a further understanding of the shape dependence of the Casimir force and will enhance the capabilities for its application in nano technology, especially for the frictionless transmission of lateral motion.