Spontaneous lateral atomic recoil force close to a photonic topological material

TL;DR

This paper predicts a strong, polarization-independent lateral recoil force on an atom near a nonreciprocal photonic topological insulator, driven by unidirectional surface plasmons, with potential experimental verification.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of a spontaneous lateral recoil force caused by unidirectional surface plasmons in a PTI, which is independent of polarization and persists at low gyration pseudovectors.

Findings

Recoil force scales as 1/d^4 at short distances

Force sign is independent of polarization and orientation

Force can be controlled by magnetic field orientation

Abstract

We investigate the quantum recoil force acting on an excited atom close to the surface of a nonreciprocal photonic topological insulator (PTI). The main atomic emission channel is the unidirectional surface-plasmon propagating at the PTI-vacuum interface, and we show that it enables a spontaneous lateral recoil force that scales at short distance as $1/d^4$, where $d$ is the atom-PTI separation. Remarkably, the sign of the recoil force is polarization and orientation-independent, and it occurs in a translation-invariant homogeneous system in thermal equilibrium. Surprisingly, the recoil force persists for very small values of the gyration pseudovector, which, for a biased plasma, corresponds to very low cyclotron frequencies. The ultra-strong recoil force is rooted on the quasi-hyperbolic dispersion of the surface-plasmons. We consider both an initially excited atom and a continuous pump scenario, the latter giving rise to a continuous lateral force whose direction can be changed at will by simply varying the orientation of the biasing magnetic field. Our predictions may be tested in experiments with cold Rydberg atoms and superconducting qubits.