@article{1036,
  author = {Alejandro Rodriguez and Alexander McCauley and J. Joannopoulos and Steven Johnson},
  title = {Theoretical ingredients of a Casimir analog computer},
  abstract = {We derive a correspondence between the contour integration of the Casimir stress tensor in the complex-frequency plane and the electromagnetic response of a physical dissipative medium in a finite real-frequency bandwidth. The consequences of this correspondence are at least threefold: First, the correspondence makes it easier to understand Casimir systems from the perspective of conventional classical electromagnetism, based on real-frequency responses, in contrast to the standard imaginary-frequency point of view based on Wick rotations. Second, it forms the starting point of finite-difference time-domain numerical techniques for calculation of Casimir forces in arbitrary geometries. Finally, this correspondence is also key to a technique for computing quantum Casimir forces at micrometer scales using antenna measurements at tabletop (e.g., centimeter) scales, forming a type of analog computer for the Casimir force. Superficially, relationships between the Casimir force and the classical electromagnetic Green{\textquoteright}s function are well known, so one might expect that any experimental measurement of the Green{\textquoteright}s function would suffice to calculate the Casimir force. However, we show that the standard forms of this relationship lead to infeasible experiments involving infinite bandwidth or exponentially growing fields, and a fundamentally different formulation is therefore required.},
  year = {2010},
  journal = {PNAS},
  volume = {107},
  pages = {9531{\textendash}9536},
  url = {http://www.pnas.org/content/107/21/9531},
}