Casimir–Polder interactions in the presence of thermally excited surface modes

Athanasios Laliotis (), Thierry Passerat de Silans, Isabelle Maurin, Martial Ducloy and Daniel Bloch
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Athanasios Laliotis: Laboratoire de Physique des Lasers, Université Paris 13
Thierry Passerat de Silans: Laboratoire de Physique des Lasers, Université Paris 13
Isabelle Maurin: Laboratoire de Physique des Lasers, Université Paris 13
Martial Ducloy: Laboratoire de Physique des Lasers, Université Paris 13
Daniel Bloch: Laboratoire de Physique des Lasers, Université Paris 13

Nature Communications, 2014, vol. 5, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract The temperature dependence of the Casimir–Polder interaction addresses fundamental issues for understanding vacuum and thermal fluctuations. It is highly sensitive to surface waves, which, in the near field, govern the thermal emission of a hot surface. Here we use optical reflection spectroscopy to monitor the atom–surface interaction potential between a Cs*(7D3/2) atom and a hot sapphire surface at distances of ~100 nm. In our experiments, that explore a large range of temperatures (500–1,000 K), the surface is at thermal equilibrium with the vacuum. The observed increase of the interaction with temperature, by up to 50%, relies on the coupling between atomic virtual transitions in the infrared range and thermally excited surface-polariton modes. We extrapolate our findings to a broad distance range, from the isolated atom to the short distances relevant to physical chemistry. Our work also opens the prospect of controlling atom–surface interactions by engineering thermal fields.

Date: 2014
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DOI: 10.1038/ncomms5364

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