| Issue |
EPL
Volume 77, Number 3, February 2007
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Article Number | 36002 | |
| Number of page(s) | 5 | |
| Section | Condensed Matter: Structural, Mechanical and Thermal Properties | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1209/0295-5075/77/36002 | |
| Published online | 22 January 2007 | |
Shearing a fermionic gas and quantized friction
Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, College of Judea and Samaria - Ariel 44837, Israel
Corresponding author: erel@yosh.ac.il
Received:
1
July
2006
Accepted:
27
November
2006
The frictional forces in sheared fermionic gas are investigated. The gas is sheared by two sliding surfaces. Except for a small imperfection (bulge) on one of them, the surfaces are totally smooth. We show that when the bulge is extremely small, and the gas is also confined in the lateral dimension, the frictional force (F) is quantized. That is, 
, where v is the sliding velocity with respect to the lubricant gas, 
is the friction coefficient, h is the Planck constant and m is an integer. It is also shown that the coefficient nc depends only on the bulge's properties (it does not depend on either the gas properties or the sliding velocity).
PACS: 68.35.Af – Atomic scale friction / 71.10.Ca – Electron gas, Fermi gas / 07.79.Sp – Friction force microscopes
© Europhysics Letters Association, 2007
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