# Critical Casimir effect in three-dimensional Ising systems: Measurements on binary wetting films

## Overview

Authors: Masafumi Fukuto, Yohko F. Yano & Peter S. Pershan

Source: Physical Review Letters, Vol.94, 135702, (2005)

Soft Matter key words: thermodynamic Casimir force, correlation length, thin films, wetting

## Abstract

I analogy to the quantum electrodynamics casimir force, arising between conducting plates due to confinement of zero-point fluctuations of vacuum fields, a thermodynamics Casimir force has been introduced. The latter arises by confining a fluid with diverging bulk correlation lenght $\xi$ to a finite dimension L. Authors of this paper set out to experimentally confirm theoretical predictions for this force, in binary thin wetting films close to liquid/vapor coexistence. They extract a Casimir amplitude $\Delta_{+-}$ as well as a Casimir scaling function $\theta_{+-}$ which, they find, depends monotonically on dimensionality.

## Soft Matter Snippet

Fig.1 : Masafumi Fukuto, Yohko F. Yano & Peter S. Pershan
Fig.2 : M. Fukuto, Y. F. Yano & P. S. Pershan