Mapping Out Atom-Wall Interaction with Atomic Clocks

Abstract

We explore the feasibility of probing atom-wall interaction with atomic clocks based on atoms trapped in engineered optical lattices. Optical lattice is normal to the wall. By monitoring the wall-induced clock shift at individual wells of the lattice, one would measure the dependence of the atom-wall interaction on the atom-wall separation. We find that the induced clock shifts are large and observable at already experimentally demonstrated levels of accuracy. We show that this scheme may uniquely probe the long-range atom-wall interaction in all three qualitatively distinct regimes of the interaction: van der Waals (image-charge interaction), Casimir-Polder (QED vacuum fluctuations), and Lifshitz (thermal-bath fluctuations) regimes.

Study of surface potentials using resonant tunnelling of cold atoms in optical lattices

“…The major difficulties of such mechanical experiments are the exact knowledge of the geometry of the setup (distance, surface roughness, etc), the precise measurement of the very small forces involved and strong electrostatic forces between interacting bodies, with unknown strength and spatial dependence. The latest progresses in laser cooling allow investigating surface potentials on short distances with a high spatial resolution using the micrometric size of laser cooled atomic clouds [4,[18][19][20][21][22] In [19,20] the authors demonstrated a shift of trap frequency of atomic Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) induced by temperature-dependent Livshitz potentials. Recently new proposals were presented for measurements of an atom-surface forces using Bloch oscillations [18], and sub-Hz optical atomic transitions [21,22].…”

Feasibility of an optical fiber clock

“…The Hg atom is least sensitive to the nonresonant atom surface interaction due to its relatively low differential static polarizability δα = α3 P0 − α1 S0 compared to the other divalent atoms (see Ref. [37] for extensive discussion of this point). Fig.…”

“…4 (a) shows the calculated clock transition frequency shift for the Hg, Cd, Mg and Sr atoms on the silica capillary axis (ρ = 0) at surface temperature T S = 77 K. In evaluating the shifts we used the dynamic electric polarizabilities from Refs. [37,46,47]. The Hg atom is least sensitive to the nonresonant atom surface interaction due to its relatively low differential static polarizability δα = α3 P0 − α1 S0 compared to the other divalent atoms (see Ref.…”

“…The previous evaluation of the surface-induced clock frequency shifts for divalent atoms was carried out for planar geometry [37]. Here we take into account the cylindrical fiber geometry and its material properties.…”

Non-additive dynamical Casimir atomic phases

“…In general, the doublepath influence functional phases cannot be separated into sums of single-path contributions [1]. The non-additivity of the environment-induced quantum phases is a direct consequence of this unseparability, which is intimately connected to the non-locality of these phases.Atom interferometers have been used to probe atomsurface interactions in the van der Waals (vdW) regime [6,7], turning atom optics into a promising field for the experimental investigation of dispersive forces [8][9][10][11][12][13]. The effect of surface interactions onto atomic waves propagating near a conducting plate is commonly described by means of the vdW (or Casimir-Polder at longer distances) potential taken at the instantaneous atomic position.…”