Rotational Vacuum Friction of Nonabsorbing Particles

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2606.24723v1
• Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2026 15:47:57 GMT
• Title: Rotational Vacuum Friction of Nonabsorbing Particles
• Abstract summary: A nonabsorbing particle rotating in vacuum can lose angular momentum only by converting mechanical energy into electromagnetic radiation.<n>At zero temperature, the frictional torque scales as $Mpropto7$ with rotation frequency $ Omega$ in anisotropic particles.<n>In contrast, axisymmetric particles are protected against photon-assisted friction regardless of temperature.
• Score: 46.07145155913717
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: A nonabsorbing particle rotating in vacuum can lose angular momentum only by converting mechanical energy into electromagnetic radiation. Here, we develop a quantum theory of rotational vacuum friction for small lossless particles and show that axial symmetry qualitatively changes the leading dissipation channel. At zero temperature, the frictional torque scales as $M\proptoΩ^7$ with rotation frequency $\ Omega$ in anisotropic particles due to the emission of correlated photon pairs whose frequencies sum to $2Ω$, while a contribution to the torque linear in $\ Omega$ is found at finite temperature. In contrast, axisymmetric particles are protected against photon-assisted friction regardless of temperature.

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