Spontaneous excitation of an accelerated hydrogen atom coupled with electromagnetic vacuum fluctuations

Abstract

We consider a multilevel hydrogen atom in interaction with the quantum electromagnetic field and separately calculate the contributions of the vacuum fluctuation and radiation reaction to the rate of change of the mean atomic energy of the atom for uniform acceleration. It is found that the acceleration disturbs the vacuum fluctuations in such a way that the delicate balance between the contributions of vacuum fluctuation and radiation reaction that exists for inertial atoms is broken, so that the transitions to higher-lying states from ground state are possible even in vacuum. In contrast to the case of an atom interacting with a scalar field, the contributions of both electromagnetic vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction to the spontaneous emission rate are affected by the acceleration, and furthermore the contribution of the vacuum fluctuations contains a non-thermal acceleration-dependent correction, which is possibly observable.

8 pages, Revtex4, accepted for publication in PRD

Cited by in corpus (32)

• Spontaneous absorption of an accelerated hydrogen atom near a conducting plane in vacuum
• The Unruh effect and entanglement generation for accelerated atoms near a reflecting boundary
• Position dependent energy level shifts of an accelerated atom in the presence of a boundary
• Geometric phase for an accelerated two-level atom and the Unruh effect
• Do static atoms outside a Schwarzschild black hole spontaneously excite?
• Resonance interaction energy between two accelerated identical atoms in a coaccelerated frame and the Unruh effect
• Fulling-Davies-Unruh effect and spontaneous excitation of an accelerated atom interacting with a quantum scalar field
• Entanglement dynamics for uniformly accelerated two-level atoms coupled with electromagnetic vacuum fluctuations
• Spontaneous excitation of a uniformly accelerated atom coupled with vacuum Dirac field fluctuations
• Entanglement dynamics for Unruh-DeWitt detectors interacting with massive scalar fields: The Unruh and anti-Unruh effects
• Spontaneous excitation of a static multilevel atom coupled with electromagnetic vacuum fluctuations in Schwarzschild spacetime
• Thermal nature of de Sitter spacetime and spontaneous excitation of atoms
• Relationship between Hawking radiation from black holes and spontaneous excitation of atoms
• Spontaneous excitation of an atom in a Kerr spacetime
• Dynamical behavior and geometric phase for a circularly accelerated two-level atom
• Radiation-reaction-induced transitions of two maximally entangled atoms in non-inertial motion
• Modification of energy shifts of atoms by the presence of a boundary in a thermal bath and the Casimir-Polder force
• Interatomic interaction of two ground-state atoms in vacuum: contributions of vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction
• Spontaneous excitation of an accelerated multilevel atom in dipole coupling to the derivative of a scalar field
• Response of a uniformly accelerated detector to massless Rarita-Schwinger fields in vacuum
• Spontaneous excitation of an accelerated atom coupled with quantum fluctuations of spacetime
• Energy shift and Casimir-Polder force for an atom out of thermal equilibrium near a dielectric substrate
• Fulling-Davies-Unruh effect for accelerated two-level single and entangled atomic systems
• Probing long-range properties of vacuum altered by uniformly accelerating two spatially separated Unruh-DeWitt detectors
• Ramsey interferometry as a witness of acceleration radiation
• The formalism for energy changing rate of an accelerated atom coupled with electromagnetic vacuum fluctuations
• Atom-field dynamics in curved spacetime
• Spontaneous excitation of a centripetally accelerated atom coupled to electromagnetic vacuum fluctuations near a reflecting boundary
• Single and entangled atomic systems in thermal bath and the Fulling-Davies-Unruh effect
• A dynamic theory of entanglement for uniformly accelerated atoms
• Effects of acceleration on interatomic interactions
• A Vector type of Unruh-DeWitt-like detector