Related papers: Using atomic interference to probe atom-surface in…
Quantum reflection occurs when ultra-cold atoms are incident on a material surface with sufficiently low velocity. The reflecting matter wave can interfere with the incident wave to form a detectable pattern, and this pattern contains…
The onset of retardation effects in atom-wall interactions is studied. It is shown that the transition range from the 1/z^3 short-range (van der Waals) interaction to the 1/z^4 long-range (Casimir) retarded interaction critically depends on…
The long-range interactions of two atoms, of an atom and a dielectric wall, of an atom and a perfectly conducting wall, and of an atom between two perfectly conducting walls are calculated, including the effects of retardation, for Li using…
We present first experimental data on the high energy behavior of helium atoms quantum reflecting from the nanoscopically disordered surface of a quartz crystal. The use of the light, stable and inert He atom not only opens the unique…
A detailed theoretical investigation of the reflection of an atomic de Broglie wave at an evanescent wave mirror is presented. The classical and the semiclassical descriptions of the reflection process are reviewed, and a full…
We observe high-resolution diffraction patterns of a thermal-energy helium-atom beam reflected from a microstructured surface grating at grazing incidence. The grating consists of 10-$\mu$m-wide Cr strips patterned on a quartz substrate and…
In a recent experiment by Eichmann et al., polarization-sensitive measurements of the fluorescence from two four-level ions driven by a linearly polarized laser were made. Depending on the polarization chosen, different degrees of…
Reradiation of a spatially non-uniform ultrashort electromagnetic pulse interacting with the linear chain of multielectron atoms is studied in the framework of sudden perturbation approximation. Angular distributions of the reradiation…
We theoretically study the low-energy scattering of ultracold atoms by a dielectric nanosphere of silica glass levitated in a vacuum. The atom and dielectric surface interact via dispersion force of which strength sensitively depends on the…
This chapter deals with atom-wall interaction occurring in the "long-range" regime (typical distances: 1-1000 nm), when the electromagnetic fluctuations of an isolated atom are modified by the vicinity with a surface. Various regimes of…
We show that the quantum reflection coefficient of ultracold heavy atoms scattering off a dielectric surface can be tuned in a wide range by suitable choice of surface and environment temperatures. This effect results from a temperature…
The dual wave-particle nature of quantum objects is a notoriously unintuitive feature of quantum theories. However, it is often deemed essential, due to quantum objects exhibiting diffraction and interference. We extend the work of…
The development of nanotechnology and atom optics relies on understanding how atoms behave and interact with their environment. Isolated atoms can exhibit wave-like (coherent) behaviour with a corresponding de Broglie wavelength and phase…
We develop a diagrammatic approach for solving few-body problems in heteronuclear fermionic mixtures near a narrow interspecies Feshbach resonance. We calculate s-, p-, and d-wave phaseshifts for the scattering of an atom by a weakly-bound…
A simple model of an atom interacting with the quantized electromagnetic field is studied. The atom has a finite mass $m$, finitely many excited states and an electric dipole moment, $\vec{d}_0 = -\lambda_{0} \vec{d}$, where $\| d^{i}\| =…
This article presents an experiment that can be conducted today and that could provide a deeper understanding of the interaction between the wave and particle aspects of an atom. The wave-particle duality is often presented as mutually…
The van der Waals interaction between neutral atoms is typically studied using stationary perturbation theory for the short-distance (London) limit, while long-distance (Casimir-Polder) results are usually derived via semiclassical,…
Spectroscopy is a unique experimental tool for measuring the fundamental Casimir-Polder interaction between excited state atoms, or other polarizable quantum objects, and a macroscopic surface. Spectroscopic measurements probe atoms at…
The excitation of atomic levels due to interaction with electromagnetic waves became of interest in accelerator physics in relation to high efficiency charge exchange injection into rings for high beam power applications. Usually, the beam…
Revealing the quantum properties of matter requires a high degree of experimental control accompanied by a profound theoretical understanding. At ultracold temperatures, quantities that appear continuous in everyday life, such as the…