Dispersion forces in inhomogeneous planarly layered media: A one-dimensional model for effective polarisabilities

Abstract

Dispersion forces such as van der Waals forces between two microscopic particles, the Casimir--Polder forces between a particle and a macroscopic object or the Casimir force between two dielectric objects are well studied in vacuum. However, in realistic situations the interacting objects are often embedded in an environmental medium. Such a solvent influences the induced dipole interaction. With the framework of macroscopic quantum electrodynamics, these interactions are mediated via an exchange of virtual photons. Via this method the impact of a homogeneous solvent medium can be expressed as local-field corrections leading to excess polarisabilities which have previously been derived for hard boundary conditions. In order to develop a more realistic description, we investigate on a one-dimensional analog system illustrating the influence of a continuous dielectric profile.

References in corpus (8)

• Determination of Atom-Surface van der Waals Potentials from Transmission-Grating Diffraction Intensities
• Real-time single-molecule imaging of quantum interference
• Electric dipole polarizabilities at imaginary frequencies for the alkali-metal, alkaline-earth, and inert gas atoms
• Local-field correction to one- and two-atom van der Waals interactions
• Effective Polarisability Models
• Hard and soft walls
• Casimir stress inside planar materials
• Quantum Electromagnetic Stress Tensor in an Inhomogeneous Medium