Dynamical Casimir-Polder force between an excited atom and a conducting wall

Federico Armata, Ruggero Vasile, Pablo Barcellona, Stefan Yoshi Buhmann, Lucia Rizzuto, and Roberto Passante
Phys. Rev. A 94, 042511 – Published 14 October 2016

Abstract

We consider the dynamical atom-surface Casimir-Polder force in the nonequilibrium configuration of an atom near a perfectly conducting wall, initially prepared in an excited state with the field in its vacuum state. We evaluate the time-dependent Casimir-Polder force on the atom and find that it shows an oscillatory behavior from attractive to repulsive both in time and in space. We also investigate the asymptotic behavior in time of the dynamical force and of related local field quantities, showing that the static value of the force, as obtained by a time-independent approach, is recovered for times much longer than the time scale of the atomic self-dressing but shorter than the atomic decay time. We then discuss the evolution of global quantities such as atomic and field energies and their asymptotic behavior. We also compare our results for the dynamical force on the excited atom with analogous results recently obtained for an initially bare ground-state atom. We show that new relevant features are obtained in the case of an initially excited atom, for example, much larger values of the dynamical force with respect to the static one, allowing for an easier way to single out and observe the dynamical Casimir-Polder effect.

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  • Received 22 June 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.94.042511

©2016 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Atomic, Molecular & Optical

Authors & Affiliations

Federico Armata1,*, Ruggero Vasile2,†, Pablo Barcellona3,‡, Stefan Yoshi Buhmann3,4,§, Lucia Rizzuto5,6,∥, and Roberto Passante5,6,¶

  • 1QOLS, Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London, London SW7 2BW, United Kingdom
  • 2UP Transfer GmbH an der Universität Potsdam, Am Neuen Palais 10, 14469 Potsdam, Deutschland
  • 3Physikalisches Institut, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Hermann-Herder-Str. 3, 79104 Freiburg, Germany
  • 4Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Albertstr. 19, 79104 Freiburg, Germany
  • 5Dipartimento di Fisica e Chimica, Università degli Studi di Palermo and CNISM, Via Archirafi 36, I-90123 Palermo, Italy
  • 6INFN, Laboratori Nazionali del Sud, I-95123 Catania, Italy

  • *f.armata@imperial.ac.uk
  • ruggero.vasile@ambrosys.de
  • pablo.barcellona@physik.uni-freiburg.de
  • §stefan.buhmann@physik.uni-freiburg.de
  • lucia.rizzuto@unipa.it
  • roberto.passante@unipa.it

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Issue

Vol. 94, Iss. 4 — October 2016

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