Roles of Blackbody Friction Forces in the Rb and Cs Atom Interferometers

TL;DR

This paper investigates the impact of blackbody friction forces on Rb and Cs atom interferometers, highlighting their significance at low and high temperatures and emphasizing the need for comprehensive spectral integration for accurate force estimation.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of blackbody friction forces in atom interferometers, emphasizing the importance of off-resonant transitions and broad-spectrum integration for precise force calculations.

Findings

Off-resonant transitions significantly contribute to BBFF at low temperatures.

Accurate evaluation of BBFF requires integration over a wide frequency spectrum.

Blackbody friction forces can affect measurement precision in atom interferometers.

Abstract

Atom interferometry is amongst the most advanced technologies that provides very high-precision measurements. There can exist a number of obscure forces that can interfere with the atoms used in this instrument. In the present work, we are probing possible roles of one such important forces, known as ``blackbody friction force (BBFF)'', that may affect the precisions in the measurements made using atom interferometers based on the Rb and Cs atoms. The BBFF can be generated on atoms due to the black-body radiations emitted by the stray electromagnetic fields present in the experimental set-up and other metallic shielding. The strength of the BBFF can be calculated by integrating the complex parts of the dynamic polarizabilities of atoms, which show varying behaviour at the resonant and non-resonant transitions in the above atoms. Our analyses suggest that the off-resonant atomic transitions make significant contributions to the BBFF at low temperatures in the Rb and Cs atom interferometers. Present study also advocates that it is imperative to carry out the integration over a wide spectrum of frequencies for correct evaluation of the BBFF; specially at higher temperatures.