Dynamics of thermal Casimir-Polder forces on polar molecules

Abstract

We study the influence of thermal Casimir-Polder forces on the near-surface trapping of cold polar molecules, with emphasis on LiH and YbF near an Au surface at room temperature. We show that for a molecule initially prepared in its electronic and rovibrational ground state, the Casimir-Polder force oscillates with the molecule-wall separation. The non-resonant force contribution and the evanescent part of the resonant force contribution almost exactly cancel at high temperature which results in a saturation of the (attractive) force in this limit. A dynamical calculation reveals how the spatial oscillations die out as thermalisation of the molecule with its environment sets in.

6 pages, 3 figures, minor corrections and additions

References in corpus (9)

• Measurement of the Temperature Dependence of the Casimir-Polder Force
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• Thermal Casimir vs Casimir-Polder forces: Equilibrium and non-equilibrium forces
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• Casimir Friction Force and Energy Dissipation for Moving Harmonic Oscillators. II
• Temperature-dependent Casimir-Polder forces on polarizable molecules
• Enhancement of thermal Casimir-Polder potentials of ground-state polar molecules in a planar cavity
• Feynman Diagrams for Dispersion Interactions Out of Equilibrium -- Two-Body Potentials for Atoms with Initial Excitation
• Spectroscopic Probe of the van der Waals Interaction between Polar Molecules and a Curved Surface
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• Casimir-Polder force fluctuations as spatial probes of dissipation in metals
• Interplay of curvature and temperature in the Casimir-Polder interaction
• Casimir-Polder force for a polarizable molecule near a dielectric substrate out of thermal equilibrium