Vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction contributions to the resonance dipole-dipole interaction between two atoms near a reflecting boundary

Abstract

We investigate the resonance dipole-dipole interaction energy between two identical atoms, one in the ground state and the other in the excited state, interacting with the electromagnetic field in the presence of a perfectly reflecting plane boundary. The atoms are prepared in a correlated (symmetric or anti-symmetric) Bell-type state. Following a procedure due to Dalibard et. al. [J. Dalibard et. al., J. Phys. (Paris) {\bf 43}, 1617 (1982); {\bf 45}, 637 (1984)], we separate the contributions of vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction (source) field to the resonance interaction energy between the two atoms, and show that only the source field contributes to the interatomic interaction, while vacuum field fluctuations do not. By considering specific geometric configurations of the two-atom-system with respect to the mirror and specific choices of dipole orientations, we show that the presence of the mirror significantly affects the resonance interaction energy and that different features appear with respect to the case of atoms in free space, for example a change in the spatial dependence of the interaction. Our findings also suggest that the presence of a boundary can be exploited to tailor and control the resonance interaction between two atoms, as well as the related energy transfer process. The possibility of observing these phenomena is also discussed.

13 pages, 12 figures

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Cited by in corpus (11)

• Radiative process of two entangled uniformly accelerated atoms in a thermal bath: a possible case of anti-Unruh event
• Radiative process of two entanglement atoms in de Sitter spacetime
• Boundarylike behaviors of the resonance interatomic energy in a cosmic string spacetime
• Resonance dipole-dipole interaction between two accelerated atoms in the presence of a reflecting plane boundary
• Interatomic interaction of two ground-state atoms in vacuum: contributions of vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction
• Resonance interaction of two entangled atoms accelerating between two mirrors
• Fulling-Davies-Unruh effect for accelerated two-level single and entangled atomic systems
• Resonance interaction between two entangled gravitational polarizable objects
• Quantum thermal field fluctuation induced corrections to the interaction between two ground-state atoms
• Single and entangled atomic systems in thermal bath and the Fulling-Davies-Unruh effect
• Resonance interaction due to quantum coherence