Casimir Friction in Terms of Moving Harmonic Oscillators: Equivalence Between Two Different Formulations
Abstract
The Casimir friction problem can be dealt with in a simplified way by considering two harmonic oscillators moving with constant relative velocity. Recently we calculated the energy dissipation for such a case, [EPL 91, 60003 (2010); Europ. Phys. J. D 61, 335 (2011)]. A recent study of Barton [New J. Phys. 12, 113044 (2010)] seemingly leads to a different result for the dissipation. If such a discrepancy really were true, it would imply a delicate difficulty for the basic theory of Casimir friction. In the present note we show that the expressions for the dissipation are in fact physically equivalent, at T=0.
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