Lateral van der Waals forces

Talk

Van der Waals forces between atoms are universally assumed to act along their mutual separation vector. Recently, we have shown [1] that this is not always the case - lateral van der Waals forces between two atoms are possible. This is facilitated by one of the atoms having a circular dipole moment, which breaks the symmetry that normally confines van der Waals forces to being simply attractive or repulsive. In the talk I will begin by surveying and connecting the whole zoo of dispersion forces (to which the van der Waals force belongs), before specialising to the details of lateral van der Waals forces and their possible observation. [1] P. Barcellona, R. Bennett, S. Y. Buhmann, arXiv quant-ph 1802.09234 (2018)

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