Effects of boundary conditions on quantum nanoresonators: decoherence-free subspaces

The Euler-Bernoulli beam model has been studied classically and semi-classically. The semi-classical quantization is done in an analogous way to the quantization of the electromagnetic field, and we found an effect that is similar to the Casimir effect, which is the photonic Casimir effect. The Casimir force, by unit area, is proportional to the first mode energy divided by the volume of the beam. For the hinged-hinged boundary condition, degenerate states were found. These degenerate pairs form decoherence-free subspaces for dispersive thermal reservoirs. For other boundary conditions, there are also subspaces with lower decoherence rates, which occur for quasi-degenerate states.