Interatomic interaction of two ground-state atoms in vacuum: contributions of vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction

TL;DR

This paper extends the DDC formalism to fourth order to analyze how vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction jointly influence the interatomic potential between two ground-state atoms in vacuum, providing new formulas for these contributions.

Contribution

It introduces a generalized formalism at fourth order, offering novel formulas for interatomic interactions that differ from previous literature.

Findings

Derived new formulas for vacuum fluctuation contributions

Separated effects of vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction

Provided a framework for fourth-order interatomic interaction analysis

Abstract

We generalize the formalism proposed by Dalibard, Dupont-Roc and Cohen-Tannoudji [the DDC formalism] to the fourth order of the coupling constant, which can be used to study the interatomic interaction of two ground-state atoms coupled with the vacuum scalar fields. We show that the interatomic potential can be attributed to the joint effect of both vacuum fluctuations and the radiation reaction of atoms. Remarkably, the formulae we derived for the contributions of vacuum fluctuations and the radiation reaction to the interatomic potential upon which future research on fourth-order effects in particular circumstances can be based differ from those in the existing literature [Phys. Rev. D 95, 085014 (2017)].