Harmonic oscillator model for the atom-surface Casimir-Polder interaction energy

Abstract

In this paper we consider a quantum harmonic oscillator interacting with the electromagnetic radiation field in the presence of a boundary condition preserving the continuous spectrum of the field, such as an infinite perfectly conducting plate. Using an appropriate Bogoliubov-type transformation we can diagonalize exactly the Hamiltonian of our system in the continuum limit and obtain non-perturbative expressions for its ground-state energy. From the expressions found, the atom-wall Casimir-Polder interaction energy can be obtained, and well-know lowest-order results are recovered as a limiting case. Use and advantage of this method for dealing with other systems where perturbation theory cannot be used is also discussed.

6 pages

References in corpus (4)

• Nonanalytic enhancement of the charge transfer from adatom to one-dimensional semiconductor superlattice and optical absorption spectrum
• Dynamical Casimir-Polder force between an atom and a conducting wall
• Dynamical Casimir-Polder force on a partially dressed atom near a conducting wall
• Casimir-Polder forces, boundary conditions and fluctuations