Casimir physics and molecular biology
We derived results for the Casimir interaction between filaments in aqueous medium that indicate the importance of the Casimir attraction for the self-assembly of actine and microtubule bundles. The paper published by New Journal of Physics in 2024 was highlighted by the CNRS Physique webpage. The team included researchers from University of California – Davis, CNRS Laboratories Gulliver (CNRS / ESPCI-PSL) and Kastler Brossel (LKB, CNRS / Collège de France / ENS-PSL, Sorbonne Université), FZJülich and EPFLausanne.
Short course on decoherence, Casimir physics and vacuum fluctuations
Course for the Ecole Doctorale QMat – Université de Strasbourg, december 2023: course1 and course 2: part A and part B.
Short course on the scattering approach to the Casimir effect
Course for the ESF-Lorentz Center Casimir School/Workshop, Leiden, Netherlands, 2012: course1 and course2
Optical Tweezers
Half of the 2018 Physics Nobel prize was awarded to Arthur Ashkin for the invention of the optical tweezers. The optical tweezers lab at UFRJ develops several application in physics (Casimir force, light angular momentum) and cell biology. My former student Rafael de S. Dutra wrote an applet that calculates the optical force and trap stiffness using our theoretical model, the Mie-Debye with spherical aberration (MDSA) theory of optical tweezers. The applet is available for download here.