The Casimir effect in microfluidics

We describe predictions of unusual Casimir and light-induced interactions between bodies immersed in fluids, including tunable and highly temperature-dependent stable suspensions of compact microspheres. We exploit recently developed, sophisticated computational techniques for modeling Casimir interactions in arbitrary geometries to study fluid deformations in corrugated surfaces with features on the scale of the fluid-layer thickness, and quantify the contributions of non-additive electromagnetic effects in those geometries. Unlike previous calculations of wetting and dewetting effects based on the Lifshitz formula, our approach is fully general and allows studies of complex microfluidic environments with no uncontrolled approximations. Time permitting, we present preliminary experimental results.