6 research outputs found
Anisotropic Atom-Surface Interactions in the Casimir-Polder Regime
The distance-dependence of the anisotropic atom-wall interaction is studied.
The central result is the 1/z^6 quadrupolar anisotropy decay in the retarded
Casimir-Polder regime. Analysis of the transition region between non-retarded
van der Waals regime (in 1/z^3) and Casimir-Polder regime shows that the
anisotropy cross-over occurs at very short distances from the surface, on the
order of 0.03 Lambda, where Lambda is the atom characteristic wavelength.
Possible experimental verifications of this distance dependence are discussed.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure
Atom-surface interaction at the nanometre scale: van der Waals-Zeeman transitions in a magnetic field
van der Waals-Zeeman transitions between magnetic states of metastable rare-gas atoms Ar*, Kr* and Xe* (3P2) induced by a solid surface in the presence of a magnetic field, are investigated theoretically and experimentally. By use of a Zeeman slower, metastable argon atoms with various velocities ranging from 170 to 560 m/s allow us to investigate the small impact parameter range (3–7 nm) within which these transitions occur, as well as the effect of atom polarisation on the sharing out of the M states