Vacuum Radiation Pressure Fluctuations on Atoms

TL;DR

This paper investigates how quantum vacuum fluctuations in radiation pressure can cause measurable recoil effects on Rydberg atoms, highlighting potential observable consequences of large vacuum stress tensor fluctuations.

Contribution

It introduces a model using Rydberg atoms with time-dependent polarizability to study vacuum radiation pressure fluctuations and their observable recoil effects.

Findings

Large vacuum pressure fluctuations can induce measurable atomic recoil.

Time-dependent polarizability amplifies the effects of vacuum fluctuations.

Potential for experimental detection of vacuum fluctuation effects.

Abstract

Recent work has shown that the stress tensor components, such as energy density or pressure, of a quantum field can be subject to large vacuum fluctuations. The energy density or pressure must be averaged in time before the fluctuations can be finite, and the probability of a large fluctuation depends upon the details of the averaging and can be much larger than that predicted by a Gaussian distribution. This paper explores vacuum radiation pressure fluctuation on Rydberg atoms and their possible observable effects. The excitation and de-excitation of a Rydberg atom provide an explicit model for the time averaging of the radiation pressure, as the atomic polarizability becomes time dependent, first increasing and then decreasing again by several orders of magnitude. This switched polarizability can induce large vacuum pressure fluctuations, which can in turn temporarily transfer linear momentum to the atom and cause a recoil which might be observable.