When two uncharged metallic mirrors are placed sufficiently close in a vacuum, fluctuations in the quantum vacuum field create an attractive force between them, known as the Casimir force. But if the mirrors are made of graphene, instead of a metal, something different can happen in the presence of a magnetic field. Writing in Physical Review Letters, Wang-Kong Tse and Allan MacDonald at the University of Texas at Austin investigate a possible method for controlling and even eliminating the Casimir force in this manner.

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