such a current, we arrive to the Drude model approach to the thermal Casimir force which is considered as the most natural one by some of the authors [38, 55, 56]. This approach, however, was found to be in drastic contradiction with the results of several precision ex- periments [14, 30, 31, 46, 58]. Because of this the problem arises whether the fluctuating electromagnetic field can lead to magnetic effects in ferromagnets. This problem awaits for its experimental resolution. 

The possibility to obtain the effect of the Casimir repulsion between two magnetodielec- tric plates separated with a vacuum gap was analyzed taking into account real material properties. It was shown that the model of magnetic materials with frequency-independent ε and µ used in the literature to obtain such a repulsion is inadequate. For real materials with frequency-dependent ε and µ it is not possible to obtain the Casimir repulsion in the configuration of two plates made of ferromagnetic dielectrics or ferromagnetic metals de- scribed by the Drude model. According to our results, a configuration demonstrating the Casimir repulsion due to magnetic properties is the dissimilar pair of plates one of which is made of ferromagnetic dielectric and the other one of nonmagnetic metal described by the plasma model. This was shown both analytically and numerically. It would be interesting to perform further numerical studies of Casimir forces for different composite materials in order to investigate in more detail the possibility of the Casimir repulsion. 

We now turn our attention to the discussion of feasible experiments which could pro- vide tests for the possible influence of magnetic properties of ferromagnetic materials on the Casimir force and for the used model of the dielectric permittivity of metal (Drude or plasma). It would be most simple to admit that the Drude model approach has already been excluded by previous measurements [30, 31, 46, 58] and deal with only the magnetic properties. Presently the most precise measurements of the Casimir pressure at separations of 0 . 5 µ m are performed by means of micromechanical torsional oscillator [30, 31] (the exper- iments using an atomic force microscope [13, 14] have the highest precision at separations of about 100 nm). Precise measurements of the Casimir interaction at separations of a few µ m are not yet available. From Fig. 2(b) the relative difference between the solid and dashed lines at a = 0 . 5 µ m is equal to η p P, Co = − 6 . 0%. We keep in mind that in the experiment [31] the relative half-width of the confidence interval for the difference between experimental and theoretical Casimir pressure at a = 0 . 5 µ m is equal to 2.8% at a 95% confidence level. Thus, the experimental precision is sufficient to exclude one of the possibilities, i.e., that the 

