The three-body Casimir-Polder potential between one excited and two ground-state atoms is evaluated. A physical model based on the dressed field correlations of vacuum fluctuations is used, generalizing a model previously introduced for three ground-state atoms. Although the three-body potential with one excited atom is already known in the literature, our model gives new insights on the nature of non-additive Casimir-Polder forces with one or more excited atoms.
@article{arxiv.quant-ph/0411033,
title = {Vacuum field correlations and three-body Casimir-Polder potential with one excited atom},
author = {R. Passante and F. Persico and L. Rizzuto},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:quant-ph/0411033},
year = {2009}
}