Interaction of an atom with layered dielectrics

TL;DR

This paper calculates how a layered dielectric affects the energy levels of a nearby atom using quantum electromagnetic field theory, providing insights into Casimir-Polder interactions and resonance effects.

Contribution

It introduces a method to quantify atomic energy shifts near layered dielectrics using normal-mode expansion and generalized Coulomb gauge.

Findings

Derived explicit formulas for atomic energy-level shifts.

Analyzed asymptotic behavior in different parameter regimes.

Explored resonance effects between atomic transitions and layer thickness.

Abstract

We determine the energy-level shift experienced by a neutral atom due the quantum electromagnetic interaction with a layered dielectric body. We use the technique of normal-mode expansion to quantize the electromagnetic field in the presence of a layered, non-dispersive and non-absorptive dielectric. We explicitly calculate the equal-time commutation relations between the electric field and vector potential operators. We show that the commutator can be expressed in terms of a generalized transverse delta-function and that this is a consequence of using the generalized Coulomb gauge to quantize the electromagnetic field. These mathematical tools turn out to be very helpful in the calculation of the energy-level shift of the atom, which can be in its ground state or excited. The results for the shift are then analysed asymptotically in various regions of the system's parameter space -- with a view to providing quick estimates of the influence of a single dielectric layer on the Casimir-Polder interaction between an atom and a dielectric half-space. We also investigate the impact of resonances between the wavelength of the atomic transition and the thickness of the top layer.