Bøker av William M. R. Simpson

Forces of the Quantum Vacuum presents a number of theoretical approaches to Casimir, van der Waals and Casimir-Polder forces that have been fruitfully employed in mainstream research, and also reviews the experimental evidence for Casimir forces. Beginning with basic ideas in quantum mechanics and building its way to a sophisticated form of macroscopic QED, the book provides an inspiring training manual for graduate students to develop in a natural progression the ideas needed for modern theoretical research on Casimir forces.

Despite more than half a century of theoretical work, the Casimir effect is still not as fully understood as some suppose. In particular, he clearly demonstrates that the most sophisticated theories fail when confronted with dielectrics in which the refractive index is not uniform but gradually changes.