Surface-atom force out of thermal equilibrium and its effect on ultra-cold atoms

TL;DR

This paper investigates the non-equilibrium surface-atom Casimir-Polder-Lifshitz force, revealing a stronger long-distance behavior and its impact on ultra-cold atom oscillations, with implications for quantum systems out of thermal equilibrium.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of the surface-atom force out of thermal equilibrium and explores its effects on ultra-cold atom dynamics, highlighting new behaviors at large distances.

Findings

Enhanced force at large distances out of thermal equilibrium

Frequency shifts in Bose-Einstein condensates due to surface interactions

Altered Bloch oscillations in ultra-cold fermionic gases

Abstract

The surface-atom Casimir-Polder-Lifshitz force out of thermal equilibrium is investigated in the framework of macroscopic electrodynamics. Particular attention is devoted to its large distance limit that shows a new, stronger behaviour with respect to the equilibrium case. The frequency shift produced by the surface-atom force on the the center-of-mass oscillations of a harmonically trapped Bose-Einstein condensate and on the Bloch oscillations of an ultra-cold fermionic gas in an optical lattice are discussed for configurations out of thermal equilibrium.