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arXiv:2110.10882 · Physical Review A

Repulsive Casimir-Polder potentials of low-lying excited states of a multilevel alkali-metal atom near an optical nanofiber

Fam Le Kien, Danil Kornovan, Síle Nic Chormaic, Thomas Busch

Published Apr 28, 2022• 9 citations
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Abstract

We study the Casimir-Polder potential of a multilevel alkali-metal atom near an optical nanofiber. We calculate the mean potential of the atom in a fine-structure state. We perform numerical calculations for the Casimir-Polder potentials of the ground state and a few low-lying excited states of a rubidium atom. We show that, unlike the potential of the ground state, which is negative and attractive, the potential of a low-lying excited state may take positive values, oscillate around the zero value with a decaying amplitude, and become repulsive in some regions of atom-to-surface distances. We observe that, for a nanofiber with a radius of 200 nm, the potential for the state $8{S}_{1/2}$ of a rubidium atom achieves a positive peak value of about $17\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{K}$ at a distance of about 150 nm from the fiber surface and becomes strongly repulsive in the region of distances from 150 to 400 nm. We also calculate the nanofiber-induced shifts of the transition frequencies of the atomic rubidium ${D}_{2}$ and ${D}_{1}$ lines. We find that the shifts are negative in the region of short distances, become positive, and oscillate around the zero value with a decaying amplitude in the region of large distances.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.105.042817

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In this paper, we report on numerical calculations of the spontaneous emission rates and Lamb shifts of a 87Rb^{87}\mathrm{Rb}87Rb atom in a Rydberg-excited state $\left(n\ensuremath{\le}30\right)$ located close to a silica optical nanofiber. We investigate how these quantities depend on the fiber's radius, the distance of the atom to the fiber, the direction of the atomic angular momentum polarization, as well as the different atomic quantum numbers. We also study the contribution of quadrupolar transitions, which may be substantial for highly polarizable Rydberg states. Our calculations are performed in the macroscopic quantum electrodynamics formalism, based on the dyadic Green's function method. This allows us to take dispersive and absorptive characteristics of silica into account; this is of major importance since Rydberg atoms emit along many different transitions whose frequencies cover a wide range of the electromagnetic spectrum. Our work is an important initial step toward building a Rydberg atom-nanofiber interface for quantum optics and quantum information purposes.
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