plasmons, Casimir's and DARPA 's oh my!

[froarty]

DARPA is seeking proposals for methods to dynamically control casimir force. The short lived "virtual" particles that are constantly winking in and out of existence around us create plasmons (density waves of electrons) in metal surfaces. Since 2 metal surface that are within 2 nano meters of each other are pushed together by this force we can assume that these particles are displaced or otherwise muted in the metal vs free space. Therefore by masking surface areas on a metal foil with a 2nm thick nonmetal we should be able to selectively expose only desired portions of the foil to strong interaction with these particles. If our metal foil is etched and or drilled to form an array of plasmonic resonators with masking to expose metal only at desired inputs we might be able to force the normally cancelling plasmons into resonance throughout the foil. At this point however I am out of gas - IF all these guesses were correct, and that is a big IF, what would we have? a metamaterial? a photon source? can plasmons even be rectified?  I'm not sue if a density wave even counts as current - coulombs past a given point per second. Any help out there?

[froarty]

To pick up where I left off, I know that researchers have created plasmonic resonators by simply etching lines on the inside metal surface of a tapered aperture that squeezed one dimension of a laser beam by converting the normally blocked portion to plasmons along the metal surface then releasing the still coherent energy back into the now much thinner more concentrated beam at the aperture exit. I realize these etchings are spaced for a very specific wavelength and the Aether is unlikely to be so obliging and will be chaotic vs coherent BUT plasmons normally damp out very quickly except where resonant cavities have been etched or drilled. This means resonant channels on a metal foil might orient and extend the plasmons. An array of such channels on both sides of a thin  foil might bias the normal average away from zero. Getting them in phase might be impossible but just preferred orientation would make for interesting comparisons against a foil with unaligned resonant channels. The goal of course is to expose quantum effects to the macroscopic world for possible exploitation.