Casimir, van der Waals, and nanoscale interactions.
11-16 April 2010, Les Houches, France.

The Casimir, van der Waals and nanoscale interactions school has been organized to offer its participants a complete overview of the state-of-the-art in the field of the Casimir effect and of some of the related research areas.

 

The school will offer a pedagogical introduction to the theory of the Casimir effect, from the origin to the questions that nowadays focus interests of physicists, chemists and engineers. A series of lectures will describe the major issues and how they are related to innovative methods of Casimir force measurements, thus illustrating the trends for future activities in this vibrant research topic. Several distinguished lecturers coming from other areas of research will report on the basic concepts on which their scientific community is growing. Beside these lectures on central topics from the community working on the Casimir force, lectures on optical forces and on hydrodynamic effects at the nanoscale, dynamical Casimir effect, vacuum birefringency, surface force measurements at large separations, modern concepts in condensed matter physics will be given.

 

By the end of the school, the participants will thus have a unique background that will help them develop their future research activities.

 

 

The school is supported by the European Science Foundation within the Casimir Research Network Program.