Van der Waals interaction and spontaneous decay of an excited atom in a superlens-type geometry

Abstract

Within the framework of macroscopic quantum electrodynamics, the resonant van der Waals potential experienced by an excited two-level atom near a planar magneto-electric two-layer system consisting of a slab of left-handed material and a perfect mirror is studied. It is shown that disregarding of material absorption leads to unphysical results, with divergent values for the potential away from the surface. Under appropriate conditions, the setup is found to feature a barrier near the surface which can be employed to levitate particles or used as a trapping or cooling mechanism. Finally, the problem of spontaneous decay [J. Kästel and M. Fleischhauer, Phys. Rev. A \textbf{68}, 011804(R) (2005)] is revisited. Disregarding of absorption is shown to drastically falsify the dependence on the atomic position of the decay rate.

10 Pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Quantum levitation by left-handed metamaterials
• Local-field correction to one- and two-atom van der Waals interactions
• Van der Waals Interactions in a Magneto-Dielectric Medium
• QED in arbitrary linear media: amplifying media

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• Atom-surface physics: A review
• Controlling Single-Photon Emission with Ultrathin Transdimensional Plasmonic Films
• Local-field corrected van der Waals potentials in magnetodielectric multilayer systems
• Stable-to-unstable transition in quantum friction
• Anisotropic Photon Emission Enhancement near Carbon Nanotube Metasurfaces