Violation of the action-reaction principle in an asymmetrically excited system

Abstract

Violation of the action-reaction principle is shown to occur in the van der Waals interaction between two atoms, one of which is excited. It is accompanied by the transfer of linear momentum to the electromagnetic vacuum. The vacuum momentum results from the asymmetric interference of the virtual photons scattered off each atom along the interatomic direction, which is in itself a manifestation of the optical theorem. This momentum, of equal strength and opposite direction to the momentum gained by the two-atom system, is ultimately released through directional spontaneous emission. A quantitative prediction of this phenomenon is made in a two-alkali atom system. It is conjectured that action-reaction violation takes place in any asymmetrically excited system.

7 pages, 3 figures and 2 appendices

References in corpus (2)

• Casimir-Polder interaction between an excited atom and a gas dielectric medium
• Two-atom interaction energies with one atom in an excited state: van der Waals potentials vs. level shifts

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Dipole-dipole interaction in cavity-QED: perturbative regime
• Interatomic interaction of two ground-state atoms in vacuum: contributions of vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction
• Casimir forces and quantum friction of finite-size atoms in relativistic trajectories
• Two-atom van-der-Waals forces with one atom excited: the identical atoms limit I
• Resonance oscillations of non-reciprocal long-range van der Waals forces between atoms in electromagnetic fields
• Nonconservative dipole forces in a two-atom system with one atom excited
• Nonreciprocal and nonconservative forces on binary systems of identical atoms