Vacuum force on an atom in a magnetodielectric cavity

Abstract

We demonstrate that, according to a recently suggested Lorentz-force approach to the Casimir effect, the vacuum force on an atom embedded in a material cavity differs substantially from the force on an atom of the cavity medium. The force on an embedded atom is of the familiar (van der Waals and Casimir-Polder) type, however, more strongly modified by the cavity medium than usually considered. The force on an atom of the cavity medium is of the medium-assisted force type with rather unusual properties, as demonstrated very recently [M. S. Tomas, Phys. Rev. A 71, 060101(R) (2005)]. This implies similar properties of the vacuum force between two atoms in a medium.

RevTeX 4, 4 pages, 1 eps figure, corrected and slightly revised

References in corpus (9)

• Impact of the Casimir-Polder Potential and Johnson Noise on Bose-Einstein Condensate Stability near Surfaces
• Quantum reflection of atoms from a solid surface at normal incidence
• Experimental Observation of Quantum Reflection in the High Energy Limit
• Casimir force in absorbing multilayers
• Electromagnetic energy-momentum and forces in matter
• Casimir force acting on magnetodielectric bodies embedded in media
• Casimir force between dispersive magnetodielectrics
• Casimir-Polder interaction of atoms with magnetodielectric bodies
• Screened Casimir forces

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Thermal corrections to the Casimir effect
• Body-assisted van der Waals interaction between two atoms
• Casimir Force on Real Materials - the Slab and Cavity Geometry
• Van der Waals Interactions in a Magneto-Dielectric Medium
• Dispersive forces on bodies and atoms: a unified approach
• Casimir attraction in multilayered plane parallel magnetodielectric systems
• Medium-modified Casimir forces
• Medium effects on the van der Waals force
• Spectroscopic Effects of Velocity-Dependent Casimir-Polder Interactions Induced by Parallel Plates
• Casimir interaction between gas media of excited atoms