OSE Seminar with Dr. Diego Dalvit on Tailoring the Quantum Vacuum
Departmental News
Posted: September 14, 2018
OSE Seminar Series
Dr. Diego Dalvit of the Theoretical Division of Los Alamos National Laboratory
Title:
Tailoring the Quantum Vacuum
Date:
Wednesday, September 19, 2018
Time:
11:00 AM to Noon
Location:
Physics and Astronomy Building, (P&A), Room 190
Map to Physics:
http://physics.unm.edu/findpanda/
ADA Accommodations are available.
Abstract:
The attractive force between two uncharged surfaces in a vacuum, first predicted by the Dutch theoretical physicist Hendrik Casimir 70 years ago, arises from quantum vacuum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field. For many years this ³force from nothing² was little more than a theoretical curiosity, but interest in the Casimir effect has blossomed in recent years thanks to experimental breakthroughs. In this talk I will review the theoretical and experimental state-of-the-art of Casimir
physics. In particular, I will discuss Casimir interactions in nanostructured materials (including metamaterials and plasmonic nanostructures), and describe recent experiments aimed at tailoring the
quantum vacuum.
Biography:
Diego Dalvit is a staff scientist at the Theoretical Division of Los Alamos National Laboratory. He earned his PhD in Physics at the University of Buenos Aires (Argentina) in 1998, then moved to the US with a Director Funded Postdoctoral Fellowship at LANL, and then became a permanent member of the LANL staff in 2002. In 2015 he became a Fellow of the American Physical Society for his work on tailoring quantum vacuum fluctuations. His current research interests are in Casimir physics, metamaterials, and
nanophotonics. He has written several reviews on Casimir physics, including a Review of Modern Physics (2016) on a materials perspective on Casimir and van der Waals interactions, and edited a book in Lecture Notes in Physics (Springer 2011) on theoretical and experiment aspects of vacuum-induced forces.
