Exact Casimir interaction between eccentric cylinders

The Casimir force is the ultimate background in ongoing searches for extragravitational forces in the micrometer range. Eccentric cylinders offer favorable experimental conditions for such measurements as spurious gravitational and electrostatic effects can be minimized. Here we report on the evaluation of the exact Casimir interaction between perfectly conducting eccentric cylinders using a mode summation technique, and study different limiting cases of relevance for Casimir force measurements, with potential implications for the understanding of mechanical properties of nanotubes.