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Chinese Physics Letters

Spontaneous Emission of an Atom in a Spacetime with Two Parallel Reflecting Boundaries

Huang Tie-tie, Zhiying Zhu, Zhu Yun-Feng, Hongwei Yu

Published Mar 31, 2009• 5 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We consider an inertial two-level atom in interaction with a real massless scalar quantum field in a spacetime between two parallel reflecting plane boundaries, and calculate the contributions of vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction to the rate of change of the atomic energy. Our results show that there exists a regime of the separation L between the two boundaries such that the excited atom's spontaneous emission is impossible. There also exist certain values of the atom's position such that the corrections due to the presence of boundaries balance each other, so that the atom's spontaneous emission rate is the same as if there were no boundaries at all.

DOI
10.1088/0256-307x/26/4/040402

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We calculate the contributions of the vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction to the rate of change of the mean atomic energy for a multi-level hydrogen atom in the multipolar coupling scheme in a spacetime with a reflecting boundary. Our results show that, due to the presence of the boundary, the polarizations of the atom in the parallel direction and in the normal direction are weighted differently in terms of their contributions to the spontaneous emission rate, which is an oscillating function of the atom distance from the boundary. The possible experimental implications of our result are briefly discussed.
We study the radiative energy level shifts of a two-level atom in dipole coupling to the derivative of a massless scalar quantum field in a spacetime with a perfectly reflecting boundary, and calculate the contributions of vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction to the level shift. It is found that the energy level shift of the excited state is an oscillating function of the atom's distance from the boundary and it can either be positive or negative, while that of the ground state is always positive. The most remarkable feature is that the energy level shift of the ground state behaves like 1/z 4 when the atom's distance from the boundary, z, is very large as compared to the transition wavelength of the atom, while it behaves like 1/z 3 when z is very small.
The presence of boundaries modifies the modes of quantum fields, which may in turn modifies the spontaneous excitation rate of accelerated atoms in interaction with these fields. In this paper, we study the effect of the presence of a reflecting boundary on the spontaneous excitation of a uniformly accelerated polarized multilevel atom interacting with quantum scalar fields in a dipole-derivative coupling scheme. We separately calculate the contributions of modified vacuum fluctuations and the radiation reaction to the spontaneous excitation rate of the atom. Our results show that the presence of the boundary modulates the excitation rate and makes it a function of the atom's distance from the boundary. When the atom is placed closer and closer to the boundary, the influence of the boundary becomes more and more drastic, with the contribution of the atom's polarization in the direction parallel to the boundary to the spontaneous excitation rate dramatically suppressed while that in the normal direction greatly enhanced.
We consider a multilevel hydrogen atom in interaction with the quantum electromagnetic field and separately calculate the contributions of the vacuum fluctuation and radiation reaction to the rate of change of the mean atomic energy of the atom for uniform acceleration. It is found that the acceleration disturbs the vacuum fluctuations in such a way that the delicate balance between the contributions of vacuum fluctuation and radiation reaction that exists for inertial atoms is broken, so that the transitions to higher-lying states from ground state are possible even in vacuum. In contrast to the case of an atom interacting with a scalar field, the contributions of both electromagnetic vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction to the spontaneous emission rate are affected by the acceleration, and furthermore the contribution of the vacuum fluctuations contains a nonthermal acceleration-dependent correction, which is possibly observable.
We analyze radiative processes of a quantum system composed by two identical two-level atoms interacting with a massless scalar field prepared in the vacuum state in the presence of perfect reflecting flat mirrors. We consider that the atoms are prepared in a stationary maximally entangled state. We investigate the spontaneous transitions rates from the entangled states to the collective ground state induced by vacuum fluctuations. In the empty-space case, the spontaneous decay rates can be enhanced or inhibited depending on the specific entangled state and changes with the distance between the atoms. Next, we consider the presence of perfect mirrors and impose Dirichlet boundary conditions on such surfaces. In the presence of a single mirror the transition rate for the symmetric state undergoes a slight reduction, whereas for the antisymmetric state our results indicate a slightly enhancement. Finally, we investigate the effect of multiple reflections by two perfect mirrors on the transition rates.
We investigate the resonance dipole-dipole interaction energy between two identical atoms, one in the ground state and the other in the excited state, interacting with the electromagnetic field in the presence of a perfectly reflecting plane boundary. The atoms are prepared in a correlated (symmetric or antisymmetric) Bell-type state. Following a procedure due to Dalibard et al. [J. Dalibard et al., J. Phys. (Paris) 43, 1617 (1982); J. Phys. (Paris) 45, 637 (1984)], we separate the contributions of vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction (source) field to the resonance interaction energy between the two atoms and show that only the source field contributes to the interatomic interaction, while vacuum field fluctuations do not. By considering specific geometric configurations of the two-atom system with respect to the mirror and specific choices of dipole orientations, we show that the presence of the mirror significantly affects the resonance interaction energy and that different features appear with respect to the case of atoms in free space, for example, a change in the spatial dependence of the interaction. Our findings also suggest that the presence of a boundary can be exploited to tailor and control the resonance interaction between two atoms, as well as the related energy transfer process. The possibility of observing these phenomena is also discussed.