Dynamical Casimir effects with atoms: From the emission of photon pairs to geometric phases

Abstract

The coupling between a moving ground-state atom and the quantum electromagnetic field is at the origin of several intriguing phenomena ranging from the dynamical Casimir emission of photons to Sagnac-like geometric phase shifts in atom interferometers. Recent progress in this emerging field reveals unprecedented connections between non-trivial aspects of modern physics such as electrodynamic retardation, non-unitary evolution in open quantum systems, geometric phases, non-locality and inertia.

Emulating Non-Hermitian Dynamics in a Finite Non-Dissipative Quantum System

“…In the DCE, the mirror oscillation at a frequency Ω m induces the emission of photons of frequencies ω ≤ Ω m in initially unpopulated electromagnetic modes. A similar effect is observed with a moving two-level atom [31,32] in the vacuum field. We find below that our FQC model with a Rabi driving reproduces these features, with the emergence of sidebands at the Rabi frequency in the FQC population.…”

Multipole Approach to the Dynamical Casimir Effect with Finite-Size Scatterers

“…While the photon production rate for a finite-size mirror is proportional to the square of its polarizability, and thus to R 6 , the infinite plate approximation leads to a photon production per unit area which is independent of geometrical factors, and thus the photon production rate scales with R 2 in this case. Indeed, the infinite plate calculation overestimates the photon production rate by 382,725π 2 (c/(ω cm R)) 4 which is in the order of ∼10 24 for typical values R ∼ 1 cm and ω cm ∼ 1 MHz.…”

“…An oscillating neutral object in vacuum emits photons, the so-called dynamical Casimir effect (DCE)—see [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ] and references therein. Photons are produced in pairs that satisfy the condition where denote the frequencies of the generated photons and is the mechanical frequency.…”

Time-Dependent Effective Hamiltonians for Light–Matter Interactions

“…Density functional theory provides a powerful framework capable of obtaining increasingly precise descriptions of molecular polarizabilities and London dispersion forces [ 88 , 89 , 90 ]. Modifications of the force due to an intervening electrolyte medium [ 91 , 92 , 93 ], with the atomic motion in connection with quantum friction [ 94 , 95 , 96 , 97 , 98 , 99 , 100 , 101 , 102 , 103 , 104 , 105 ] or with non-local interferometric phases [ 106 , 107 , 108 ], the atomic internal state [ 109 ], and coming from boundary conditions imposed by nearby structures [ 110 , 111 , 112 , 113 , 114 ], have disclosed important features of the London–van der Waals interactions.…”