Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Luo Y
PROVIDER: S-EPMC4284608 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Dec
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20141202 52
Calculated using classical electromagnetism, the van der Waals force increases without limit as two surfaces approach. In reality, the force saturates because the electrons cannot respond to fields of very short wavelength: polarization charges are always smeared out to some degree and in consequence the response is nonlocal. Nonlocality also plays an important role in the optical spectrum and distribution of the modes but introduces complexity into calculations, hindering an analytical solution ...[more]