Atom-surface interaction induced by quenched monopolar charge disorder

Abstract

We study the modification to the energy level shifts of an atom induced by the quenched monopolar charge disorder inside the bulk of neighboring dielectric slabs as well as their surfaces. By assuming that the charge disorder follows Gaussian statistics with a zero mean, we find that the disorder generally results in a downward shift of the energy levels, which corresponds to an attractive force that can compete with and overcome the nonresonant Casimir-Polder force for sufficiently large atom-surface separations $z_0$. For an atom near a single semi-infinite slab with bulk (surface) charge disorder, the shift decays as $z_0^{-1}$ ($z_0^{-2}$). For both surface and bulk disorder, the shift is proportional to the variance of the charge disorder density. In addition, we investigate the behavior of the charge disorder-induced energy level shift for an atom confined to a vacuum gap between two coplanar and semi-infinite slabs of the same dielectric material, finding that the position of net zero disorder-induced force occurs closer to the surface of the slab with the smaller charge disorder variance.

16 pages, 7 figures, 5 appendices

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