Van der Waals interaction mediated by an optically uniaxial layer

We study the van der Waals interaction between macroscopic bodies separated by a thin anisotropic film with a uniaxial permittivity tensor. We describe the effect of anisotropy of the media on the magnitude and sign of the interaction. The resulting differences in the van der Waals interaction are especially important for the stability of strongly confined liquid crystals, and nanostructures characterized by highly uniaxial macroscopic molecular arrangement, such as in self-assemblies of long organic molecules forming films, membranes, colloids, etc. We introduce an improved expression for the Hamaker constant which takes into account the uniaxial symmetry of a medium. In special cases neglecting the optical anisotropy even leads to an incorrect sign of the interaction.