Impact of Casimir-Polder interaction on Poisson-spot diffraction at a dielectric sphere

Abstract

Diffraction of matter-waves is an important demonstration of the fact that objects in nature possess a mixture of particle-like and wave-like properties. Unlike in the case of light diffraction, matter-waves are subject to a vacuum-mediated interaction with diffraction obstacles. Here we present a detailed account of this effect through the calculation of the attractive Casimir-Polder potential between a dielectric sphere and an atomic beam. Furthermore, we use our calculated potential to make predictions about the diffraction patterns to be observed in an ongoing experiment where a beam of indium atoms is diffracted around a silicon dioxide sphere. The result is an amplification of the on-axis bright feature which is the matter-wave analogue of the well-known `Poisson spot' from optics. Our treatment confirms that the diffraction patterns resulting from our complete account of the sphere Casimir-Polder potential are indistinguishable from those found via a large-sphere non-retarded approximation in the discussed experiments, establishing the latter as an adequate model.

13 pages, 10 figures

References in corpus (10)

• Measurement of the Temperature Dependence of the Casimir-Polder Force
• Decoherence of matter waves by thermal emission of radiation
• Effect of the Casimir-Polder force on the collective oscillations of a trapped Bose-Einstein condensate
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• Casimir edge effects
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• Roughness correction to the Casimir force : Beyond the Proximity Force Approximation
• The van der Waals energy of atomic systems near absorbing and dispersing bodies
• Casimir-Polder interaction between an atom and a dielectric grating
• Casimir-Polder interaction for gently curved surfaces

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• An atom passing through a hole in a dielectric membrane: Impact of dispersion forces on mask-based matter-wave lithography
• Fluctuation-induced Forces on Nanospheres in External Fields
• Poisson's spot and Gouy phase
• Controlling the atom-sphere interaction with an external electric field
• Electrically controlled focusing of de Broglie matter waves by Fresnel zone plate