Casimir Lab

Quantum vacuum force sandbox

Presets

Plate gap

Separation

Casimir pressure scales as 1/a⁴ for perfect metals

20 nm

Plate area

Force grows linearly with area

1.00e+4 µm²

Materials

Plate A

Plate B

Surface structure

Geometry

Ideal plates. Force follows 1/a⁴ in the perfect-metal limit.

Environment

Setting

Ideal Casimir regime. Residual gas damping is negligible.

Temperature

Locked to the environment preset

293 K

Use environment temperature

Power input

Drive mode

Piezo / electrostatic actuation of the gap. Casimir spring + radiation damping.

Drive power

Electrical or mechanical budget fed to the apparatus

100 µW

Drive frequency

1 MHz

Modulation depth

Oscillation amplitude as a fraction of the gap

8.0%

Mounting apparatus

Apparatus

Au · Au · Smooth parallel

Laboratory vacuum

Gap scale

20 nm

shown 5×10³×

Pressure

4.56 kPa

Force

45.59 µN

P_out

96.73 pW

Pull

quantum

Force

Attractive

Pressure

−4.56 kPa

quantum regime

Force

−45.59 µN

weight of a mosquito

Stored energy

303.9 fJ

one-shot, if plates close

vs perfect metal

56%

ε_medium 1.00

Mode cutoff

λ > 40 nm excluded

UVopticalIR / microwave

Pressure vs gap

Power estimate

theoretical

Drive in

100 µW

Estimated out

96.73 pW

η = 0.000097%

DCE photons

2.98e-59 W

motion-induced radiation

Cycle / engine

96.73 pW

rectified mechanical or Carnot

InputDissipatedOut

Competing loads

Casimir (this gap)−45.59 µN
Plate weight3.79 nN
Thermal Brownian202.3 fN

How to read the output

Force and stored energy follow Lifshitz theory with plasma, medium, thermal, and geometry corrections — these are established. Continuous watts are a reduced model of dynamical Casimir radiation plus a rectifier or two-bath engine, calibrated to published circuit-DCE and MEMS scales. They are not a vacuum free-energy source: output cannot exceed drive, and a static gap does no net work.