Pseudo-Casimir effect in untwisted chiral nematic liquid crystals.

We investigate theoretically the pseudo-Casimir force between parallel plates immersed in a chiral nematic liquid crystal. We focus on small-separation limit where the director configuration between the plates inducing strong homeotropic anchoring is uniform. We find that the force is attractive at separations smaller than the crossover distance and repulsive otherwise, and that it diverges logarithmically at the critical distance where the uniform structure is replaced by a distorted structure. We also analyze modifications to the force introduced by magnetic field and comment on the possible detection of the effect.