A rigourous theory for the determination of the van der Waals interactions in colloidal systems is presented. The method is based on fluctuational electrodynamics and a multiple-scattering method which provides the electromagnetic Greens tensor. In particular, expressions for the Greens tensor are presented for arbitrary, finite, collections of colloidal particles, for infinitely periodic or defected crystals as well as for finite slabs of crystals. The presented formalism allows for {it ab initio} calculations of the vdW interactions is colloidal systems since it takes fully into account retardation, many-body, multipolar and near-fields effects.
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