Les Houches School

The Casimir, van der Waals and nanoscale interactions school is organized to provide its participants an overview of the state-of-the-art in the field of the Casimir effect and of some of the related research areas. The school will offer a pedagogical introduction to the theory of the Casimir effect, from the origin to the questions which nowadays focus interest of physicists, chemists and engineers. A series of lectures will describe the major issues and how they are related to innovative methods of Casimir force measurements, thus illustrating the trends for future activities in this vibrant research field. Several distinguished lecturers coming from other areas of research will report on the basic concepts on which their scientific community is growing. Besides lectures on central topics from the community working on the Casimir force, lectures on optical forces and on hydrodynamic effects at the nanoscale, dynamical Casimir effect, vacuum birefringency, surface force measurements at large separations and modern concepts in condensed matter physics will be given. Click here to access the website.