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Casimir effect
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Physical force caused by virtual particles
~35 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Casimir forces on parallel plates
In quantum field theory, the Casimir effect (or Casimir force) is a physical force acting on the macroscopic boundaries of a confined space which arises from the quantum fluctuations of a field. The term Casimir pressure is sometimes used when it is described in units of force per unit area. It is named after the Dutch physicist Hendrik Casimir, who predicted the effect for electromagnetic systems in 1948.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Casimir effect” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.