Dresden 2011 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 54: Quantum Effects: QED
Q 54.4: Vortrag
Donnerstag, 17. März 2011, 15:15–15:30, SCH A01
(contribution withdrawn) Temperature invariance of Casimir–Polder potentials — •Stefan Yoshi Buhmann1, Simen Ådnøy Ellingsen2, and Stefan Scheel1 — 1Quantum Optics and Laser Science, Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London, Prince Consort Road, London SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom — 2Department of Energy and Process Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, N-7491 Trondheim, Norway
It is commonly assumed that thermal photons have an impact on the Casimir–Polder interaction of an atom with a surface. In particular, one would expect the potential of molecules or Rydberg atoms with low-frequency transitions to be very sensitive to temperature changes, because the thermal photon number for such transitions is very large even at room temperature.
In contrast to these expectations, we demonstrate that the potential of an atom in an energy eigenstate at nonretarded distance from a metal surface is temperature-invariant over the whole range from zero to room temperature and beyond [1]. As demonstrated for an infinite plate, this is due to strong cancellations of contributions from virtual and evanescent photons, leaving a temperature-invariant total potential. We are able to prove that more generally, temperature-invariance holds for metal bodies for arbitrary shapes [2].
[1] S. Å. Ellingsen, S. Y. Buhmann and S. Scheel, Phys. Rev. Lett.
104, 223003 (2010).
[2] S. Y. Buhmann, S. Å. Ellingsen and S. Scheel, in preparation (2010).