English

Harmonic oscillator model for the atom-surface Casimir-Polder interaction energy

Quantum Physics 2012-06-21 v2

Abstract

In this paper we consider a quantum harmonic oscillator interacting with the electromagnetic radiation field in the presence of a boundary condition preserving the continuous spectrum of the field, such as an infinite perfectly conducting plate. Using an appropriate Bogoliubov-type transformation we can diagonalize exactly the Hamiltonian of our system in the continuum limit and obtain non-perturbative expressions for its ground-state energy. From the expressions found, the atom-wall Casimir-Polder interaction energy can be obtained, and well-know lowest-order results are recovered as a limiting case. Use and advantage of this method for dealing with other systems where perturbation theory cannot be used is also discussed.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1205.5635,
  title  = {Harmonic oscillator model for the atom-surface Casimir-Polder interaction energy},
  author = {Roberto Passante and Lucia Rizzuto and Salvatore Spagnolo and Satoshi Tanaka and Tomio Y. Petrosky},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1205.5635},
  year   = {2012}
}

Comments

6 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-21T21:09:23.183Z