Dynamics of thermal Casimir-Polder forces on polar molecules
- Department of Energy and Process Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, N-7491 Trondheim (Norway)
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.
- OSTI ID:
- 21308487
- Journal Information:
- Physical Review. A, Vol. 79, Issue 5; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.79.052903; (c) 2009 The American Physical Society; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1050-2947
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Thermal Casimir versus Casimir-Polder Forces: Equilibrium and Nonequilibrium Forces
Casimir-Polder forces on moving atoms