Van der Waals Interactions in a Magneto-Dielectric Medium

Abstract

The van der Waals interaction between two ground-state atoms is calculated for two electrically or magnetically polarizable particles embedded in a dispersive magneto-dielectric medium. Unlike previous calculations which infer the atom-atom interaction from the dilute-medium limit of the macroscopic, many-body van der Waals interaction, the interaction is calculated directly for the system of two atoms in a magneto-dielectric medium. Two approaches are presented, the first based on the quantized electromagnetic field in a dispersive medium without absorption and the second on Green functions that allow for absorption. We show that the correct van der Waals interactions are obtained regardless of whether absorption in the host medium is taken into account.

9 pages, 1 figure

References in corpus (2)

• Casimir-Polder interaction of atoms with magnetodielectric bodies
• Medium effects on the van der Waals force

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Van der Waals interaction and spontaneous decay of an excited atom in a superlens-type geometry
• Casimir-Polder interatomic potential between two atoms at finite temperature and in the presence of boundary conditions
• Casimir effect with dynamical matter on thin mirrors
• Interatomic van der Waals potential in the presence of a magneto-electric sphere
• Local-field corrected van der Waals potentials in magnetodielectric multilayer systems