van der Waals-Lifshitz forces between anisotropic ellipsoidal particles

Abstract

Van der Walls‐Lifshitz forces between an ellipsoidal particle and a dielectric wall as well as between two ellipsoidal particles suspended in a liquid are calculated on the basis of the theory of McLachlan. The materials constituting the ellipsoids may be anisotropic. It is assumed, however, that in each ellipsoid the principal axes of the tensor of dielectric permeability coincide with those of the ellipsoid. The obtained formulas include those for spheroids by Kihara and Honda as well as those for spheres by Dzyaloshinskii, Lifshitz and Pitaevskii as particular cases. The variations of the free energies of interaction with respect to the mutual orientations of the interacting bodies are discussed. The three‐body forces among three ellipsoids as well as among two ellipsoids and a wall are also calculated.