Fluctuation interaction of particles in a fluid

Abstract

The interaction of bodies in a fluid, mediated by hydrodynamic fluctuations and proposed by Dzyaloshinskii, Lifshitz, and Pitaevskii, is calculated exactly for parallel infinite planes and is shown to be attractive. The second mechanism of fluctuation interaction, proposed in the present work, is due to fluctuations of linear and angular velocities of bodies in a hydrodynamic medium and leads to a repulsion. The both mechanisms provide an interaction energy of two particles in a fluid of the order of temperature for the inter-particle distance of the micron scale, where the interaction mediated by electromagnetic fluctuations is small. When two particles approaches a wall, placed inside a fluid, the first (attractive) interaction is violated a little, but the second (repulsive) weakens. This behavior correlates with the experimentally observed attraction of particles which appears when they approach a wall.