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Optics in the Life Sciences

Attractive optical forces from black–body radiation

Matthias Sonnleitner, Monika Ritsch‐Marte, Helmut Ritsch

Published Jan 1, 2013• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Black--body radiation around hot objects creates AC~Stark shifts in nearby atoms proportional to the fourth power of the temperature inducing an attractive dipole force. For hydrogen atoms it can be stronger than gravity and surpass repulsive radiation pressure.
DOI
10.1364/boda.2013.jw3b.6

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Objects at finite temperature emit thermal radiation with an outward energy–momentum flow, which exerts an outward radiation pressure. At room temperature, a caesium atom scatters on average less than one of these blackbody radiation photons every 108 years. Thus, it is generally assumed that any scattering force exerted on atoms by such radiation is negligible. However, atoms also interact coherently with the thermal electromagnetic field. In this work, we measure an attractive force induced by blackbody radiation between a caesium atom and a heated, centimetre-sized cylinder, which is orders of magnitude stronger than the outward-directed radiation pressure. Using atom interferometry, we find that this force scales with the fourth power of the cylinder’s temperature. The force is in good agreement with that predicted from an a.c. Stark shift gradient of the atomic ground state in the thermal radiation field 1 . This observed force dominates over both gravity and radiation pressure, and does so for a large temperature range. The effect of blackbody radiation is expected to be very weak. The acceleration due to the attractive optical forces from blackbody radiation is measured in an atom interferometer and, surprisingly, it dominates gravity and radiation pressure
Light is known to exert a pushing force through the radiation pressure on any surface it is incident upon, via the transfer of momentum from the light to the surface. For an atom, the interaction with light can lead to both absorption as well as emission of photons, leading to repulsive and attractive forces, respectively. For classical light, these two processes occur at the same rates. Therefore, a thermal ensemble of atoms at a finite temperature always experiences a net pushing force. In this paper, we show that when treated quantum mechanically the pulsed electromagnetic field interacting with the thermal ensemble of atoms leads to unequal transition rates, again resulting in a non-zero net force. However, the signature and the magnitude of the force depends upon the intensity of the light, the number of atoms, and the initial temperature of the ensemble. Thus, even at finite temperature, controlling the parameters of the electromagnetic pulse and the number of particles in the ensemble, the net force can be changed from repulsive to attractive, generating negative radiation pressure in the process. Quite counterintuitively, this negative radiation pressure arising out of pure quantum character of light gets stronger for higher temperatures.
A general method is presented for calculating the higher-order terms of series in powers of the black-body radiation field for the Stark-state wavefunctions, dipole transition matrix elements and corresponding frequency shifts of hyperfine splitting in the ground states for Cs and Rb atoms. A numerical method for calculating the light shifts in Sr atoms is described. It is based on the Green function method for summation over all intermediate states and exact Dirac–Fock wavefunctions for the resonant transitions to the first excited s-, p- and d-states. By comparing the calculated Stark shift with results of measurements employing atomic frequency standards, the black-body radiation effects on the ground state are analysed.