Dynamics of thermal Casimir-Polder forces on polar molecules

Simen Ådnøy Ellingsen, Stefan Yoshi Buhmann, and Stefan Scheel
Phys. Rev. A 79, 052903 – Published 7 May 2009

Abstract

We study the influence of thermal Casimir-Polder forces on the near-surface trapping of cold polar molecules, with emphasis on LiH and YbF near a Au surface at room temperature. We show that even for a molecule initially prepared in its electronic and rovibrational ground state, the Casimir-Polder force oscillates with the molecule-wall separation. The nonresonant force and the evanescent part of the resonant force almost exactly cancel at high temperature which results in a saturation of the (attractive) force in this limit. This implies that the Casimir-Polder force on a fully thermalized molecule can differ dramatically from that obtained using a naive perturbative expansion of the Lifshitz formula based on the molecular ground-state polarizability. A dynamical calculation reveals how the spatial oscillations die out on a typical time scale of several seconds as thermalization of the molecule with its environment sets in.

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  • Received 10 December 2008

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.79.052903

©2009 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Simen Ådnøy Ellingsen

  • Department of Energy and Process Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, N-7491 Trondheim, Norway

Stefan Yoshi Buhmann and Stefan Scheel

  • Quantum Optics and Laser Science, Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London, Prince Consort Road, London SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom

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Vol. 79, Iss. 5 — May 2009

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