Related papers: Will a decaying atom feel a friction force?
The force on electric and magnetic dipoles moving in vacuo is discussed in the general case of time-variable non-uniform fields and time-variable dipole moments, to first order in v/c and neglecting radiation reaction. Emphasis is given to…
Quantum vacuum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field in empty space seem not to produce observable effects over the motion of a charged test particle. However, when a change in the background vacuum state is implemented, as for instance…
The dynamic frictional force between solid surfaces in relative motion differs from the static force needed to initiate motion, but this distinction is not usually thought to occur for liquid drops moving on a solid. Recent experiments…
This article summarizes our recent efforts to understand spontaneous quantum vacuum forces and torques, which require that a stationary object be out of thermal equilibrium with the blackbody background radiation. We proceed by a systematic…
We theoretically investigate the role of chiral-transitions in the quantum friction force that acts on a two-level atom that moves with relative velocity v parallel to a planar metallic surface. We find that the friction force has a…
In this paper we investigate how the dynamics of a two-level atom is affected by its interaction with the quantized near field of a plasmonic slab in relative motion. We demonstrate that for small separation distances and a relative…
The possibility of the effect of electromagnetic radiation (hereinafter - radiation from vacuum) due to the interaction of zero-point vacuum fluctuations with free charged particles accelerated at relativistic speeds in electric or magnetic…
A test mass, $M$, moving through an ambient medium of light particles with lower average kinetic energy than itself suffers a deceleration caused by its scattering of the light particles. The phenomenon is usually referred to as dynamical…
Perturbation theory, simulations and scaling arguments predict that there should be no static friction for two weakly interacting flat atomically smooth clean solid surfaces. The absence of static friction results from the fact that the…
The use of atomic decay rates as a probe of sub-vacuum phenomena will be studied. Because electromagnetic vacuum fluctuations are essential for radiative decay of excited atomic states, decay rates can serve as a measure of the suppression…
Particle-antiparticle pairs are predicted by quantum field theory to appear as vacuum fluctuations. The model of the vacuum used here is postulated to have the following properties: To minimize the violation of conservation energy allowed…
Quantum fluctuations of the vacuum are both a surprising and fundamental phenomenon of nature. Understood as virtual photons flitting in and out of existence, they still have a very real impact, \emph{e.g.}, in the Casimir effects and the…
The interaction between an atom and the quantized electromagnetic field depends on the position of the atom. Then the atom experiences a force which is the minus gradient of this interaction. Through the Heisenberg equations of motion and…
An excited-state atom whose emitted light is back-reflected by a distant mirror can experience trapping forces, because the presence of the mirror modifies both the electromagnetic vacuum field and the atom's own radiation reaction field.…
We calculate the friction force between two semi-infinite solids in relative parallel motion (velocity $V$), and separated by a vacuum gap of width $d$. The friction force result from coupling via a fluctuating electromagnetic field, and…
We study all known and as yet unknown forces between two neutral atoms, modeled as three dimensional harmonic oscillators, arising from mutual influences mediated by an electromagnetic field but not from their direct interactions. We allow…
The dynamical friction force experienced by a body moving at relativistic speed in a gaseous medium is examined. This force, which arises due to the gravitational interaction of the body with its own gravitationally-induced wake, is…
Quantum weak measurement has attracted much interest recently [J. Dressel et al., Rev. Mod. Phys. 86, 307 (2014)] because it could amplify some weak signals and provide a technique to observe nonclassical phenomena. Here, we apply this…
This paper is a second in a series devoted to the study of a two-oscillator system in linear relative motion (the first one published as a letter in Europhys. Lett. 91, 60003 (2010)). The main idea behind considering this kind of system is…
We describe a new mechanism of decoherence in excited atoms as a result of thermal particles scattering by the atomic nucleus. It is based on the idea that a single scattering will produce a sudden displacement of the nucleus, which will be…