Material dependence of Casimir forces: Gradient expansion beyond proximity

A widely used method for estimating Casimir interactions [H. B. G. Casimir, Proc. K. Ned. Akad. Wet. 51, 793 (1948)] between gently curved material surfaces at short distances is the proximity force approximation (PFA). While this approximation is asymptotically exact at vanishing separations, quantifying corrections to PFA has been notoriously difficult. Here, we use a derivative expansion to compute the leading curvature correction to PFA for metals (gold) at room temperature. We derive an explicit expression for the amplitude (theta) over cap (1) of the PFA correction to the force gradient for axially symmetric surfaces. In the non-retarded limit, the corrections to the Casimir free energy are found to scale logarithmically with distance. For gold, (theta) over cap (1) has an unusually large temperature dependence. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3686903]