In this talk, Prof. Ricardo Decca presents our current efforts to perform a measurement of the elusive quantum friction. While there is now a more or less established theoretical picture of the expected friction experienced by a dipole moving in front of a dielectric plate, experimental results are lagging. At the heart of the problem is the issue that the force itself is minuscule, and the experimental approach to measure it is plagued with systematic contributions that will mask the desired signal. My theoretical collaborators have circumvented this problem by looking into the effects of quantum friction on the relative phase of a two-level system, akin to the existence of a Berry phase. I will show the elements of the calculation, the proposed system we are working on to see the results, and the current advances in our lab. I will discuss potential systematic errors and how to circumvent them.
Seminar Link: Picoelectrodynamics Theory Network - YouTube
