Coulomb interactions between disordered charge distributions

Abstract

We review some of the recent results in the context of the Coulomb interaction between dielectric surfaces which are randomly charged but remain net-neutral on the average. Such surfaces are found to interact in vacuum with attractive long-range normal forces due to the presence of the quenched charge disorder which can compete with the standard Casimir-Van der Waals forces. They can also interact with random lateral forces and torques, which exhibit zero mean values but finite and long-range root-mean-square values. These effects can play an important role in Casimir experiments as well as in the interaction between solid surfaces as well as biomolecular surfaces that are often covered by disordered charge distributions.