Casimir-Induced Instabilities at Metallic Surfaces and Interfaces

Surface distortion splits surface plasmons asymmetrically in energy with a net lowering of zero-point energy. We contrast this with the symmetrical distortion of electronic energy levels. We use conformal mapping to demonstrate this splitting and find that surface corrugation always leads to a decrease in the zero-point energy of a metallic surface, but the decrease is not strong enough to drive a surface reconstruction on its own. A second metallic surface in proximity to the first gives a more significant lowering of energy, sufficient to drive the instability of a mercury thin film. This mechanism provides a fundamental length scale limit to planar nanostructures.

Automated summary

The research shows that surface distortion asymmetrically splits surface plasmon energy and leads to a decrease in zero-point energy; conformal mapping can be used to demonstrate this splitting phenomenon; surface corrugation of metallic surfaces typically results in a decrease in zero-point energy, but usually not strong enough to independently drive surface reconstruction.