The van der Waals (vdW) interaction between thin metallic films varies with separation as the separation to a fractional power. This is in contrast to the usual integer-power separation dependence between objects such as atoms, dielectric films, or thick metallic films. We have calculated the free energy of attraction between sheets of gold, silver, copper, beryllium, and tungsten numerically using experimentally found dielectric functions. The results are compared with the corresponding analytical results obtained using simple model dielectric functions. We have investigated how thin the metallic films must be in order for the fractional vdW interaction to be present. To our knowledge, fractional vdW interaction has not yet been confirmed experimentally.

• Received 19 July 1999

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.61.2204