Lateral Casimir-Polder forces by breaking time-reversal symmetry

TL;DR

This paper investigates the lateral Casimir-Polder force on a circularly rotating emitter near a dielectric surface, revealing an oscillating, anisotropic recoil force influenced by the surface's lossy properties and emitter dynamics.

Contribution

It demonstrates the emergence of a lateral Casimir-Polder force due to broken time-reversal symmetry from circular motion, with a detailed analysis applicable to complex geometries.

Findings

Lateral force oscillates with emitter-surface distance

Lossy dielectric properties significantly affect the force in near-field

Force decays exponentially over the emitter's lifetime

Abstract

We examine the lateral Casimir-Polder force acting on a circular rotating emitter near a dielectric plane surface. As the circular motion breaks time-reversal symmetry, the spontaneous emission in a direction parallel to the surface is in general anisotropic. We show that a lateral force arises which can be interpreted as a recoil force because of this asymmetric emission. The force is an oscillating function of the distance between the emitter and the surface, and the lossy character of the dielectric strongly influences the results in the near-field regime. The force exhibits also a population-induced dynamics, decaying exponentially with respect to time on timescales of the inverse of the spontaneous decay rate. We propose that this effect could be detected measuring the velocity acquired by the emitter, following different cycles of excitation and thermalisation. Our results are expressed in terms of the Green's tensor and can therefore easily be applied to more complex geometries.