Fluctuation-induced interactions between dielectrics in general geometries

Abstract

We study thermal Casimir and quantum non-retarded Lifshitz interactions between dielectrics in general geometries. We map the calculation of the classical partition function onto a determinant which we discretize and evaluate with the help of Cholesky factorization. The quantum partition function is treated by path integral quantization of a set of interacting dipoles and reduces to a product of determinants. We compare the approximations of pairwise additivity and proximity force with our numerical methods. We propose a ``factorization approximation'' which gives rather good numerical results in the geometries that we study.