Dynamical Casimir photons from rotation of a nonspherical particle

Abstract

We consider a non-spherical neutral particle spinning in free space and interacting with the electromagnetic quantum vacuum. When the rotation axis is orthogonal to the particle symmetry axis, the scattered field develops frequency sidebands that induce the parametric emission of dynamical Casimir photon pairs. Under the structural constraint of a maximum tip velocity, the emission rate is maximized for a nearly spherical geometry and is further enhanced near a polaritonic resonance. For realistic material parameters, even these optimized upper bounds remain exceedingly small, setting stringent quantitative limits on free-space rotational dynamical Casimir emission with a single nanoparticle.