Regimes of the lateral van der Waals force in the presence of dielectrics

Abstract

In a recent paper, it was shown that, under the action of the lateral van der Waals (vdW) force due to a perfectly conducting corrugated surface, a neutral anisotropic polarizable particle in vacuum can be attracted not only to the nearest corrugation peak, but also to a valley, or an intermediate point between a peak and a valley, with such behaviors called peak, valley and intermediate regimes, respectively. In the present paper, we investigate how these regimes are affected by the consideration of two non-dispersive semi-infinite dielectrics $\epsilon_{1}$ and $\epsilon_{2}$, separated by a corrugated interface. Specifically, we study the vdW interaction between a neutral anisotropic polarizable particle, embedded in the dielectric $\epsilon_{2}$, and the dielectric $\epsilon_{1}$. We show that when $\epsilon_{2}<\epsilon_{1}$ the peak, valley and intermediate regimes have, unless numerical factors, behaviors similar to those found for the situation where the particle is in vacuum and interacting with a conducting medium. For the case $\epsilon_{2}>\epsilon_{1}$, one might expect a mere permute between the peak and valley regimes, in comparison to the case $\epsilon_{2}<\epsilon_{1}$. Surprisingly, we find that when $\epsilon_{2}>\epsilon_{1}$ the regimes exhibit a very different and nontrivial behavior. Moreover, we show that similar regimes arise in the classical case involving a neutral polarized particle. The description of how the peak, valley and intermediate regimes are affected by the presence of dielectrics may be relevant for a better understanding of the interaction between anisotropic particles and corrugated surfaces.