Miri MirFaez, Nasiri Mojtaba
Department of Physics, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.
Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2010 Jul;82(1 Pt 2):016117. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.82.016117. Epub 2010 Jul 30.
We study a nanoscale system composed of one corrugated cylinder (pinion) placed between two corrugated plates (racks). The pinion and racks have no mechanical contact, but are coupled via the lateral Casimir force-one of the most spectacular consequences of quantum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field. The noncontact design of the device could help with the noteworthy wear problem in nanoscale mechanical systems. We consider the case where both racks undergo harmonic lateral motion. We assume that the amplitude, frequency, and phase of one of the racks are known. We show that probing the pinion motion, one can determine the vibration characteristics of the other rack.