The theory of molecular attractive forces between solids

Publisher Summary The presence of attractive forces between neutral atoms naturally results in the presence of similar forces between two macroscopic bodies whose surfaces are brought to within a small distance of one another. The method for calculating interaction forces, which is based on these considerations, has full generality and is applicable to anybody at any temperature. It also automatically takes into account retardation effects, which become important for sufficiently large separations between the bodies. In the limiting case of rarefied media, the method must lead to the same results as are obtained by considering the interactions of individual atoms. The collection of boundary conditions and continuity equations determines all the field amplitudes.