Casimir-Polder forces, boundary conditions and fluctuations

TL;DR

This paper reviews various aspects of Casimir-Polder forces, including atom-atom and atom-wall interactions, emphasizing boundary conditions, vacuum fluctuations, and force fluctuations, with implications for understanding quantum field effects near boundaries.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of Casimir-Polder forces, offering new interpretations and methods for analyzing boundary effects and force fluctuations in quantum electrodynamics.

Findings

Boundary conditions significantly influence atom-atom Casimir-Polder potentials.

A new method is proposed for analyzing atom-wall Casimir-Polder forces, suitable for time-dependent scenarios.

Force fluctuations between an atom and a conducting wall could be observed experimentally.

Abstract

We review different aspects of the atom-atom and atom-wall Casimir-Polder forces. We first discuss the role of a boundary condition on the interatomic Casimir-Polder potential between two ground-state atoms, and give a physically transparent interpretation of the results in terms of vacuum fluctuations and image atomic dipoles. We then discuss the known atom-wall Casimir-Polder force for ground- and excited-state atoms, using a different method which is also suited for extension to time-dependent situations. Finally, we consider the fluctuation of the Casimir-Polder force between a ground-state atom and a conducting wall, and discuss possible observation of this force fluctuation.