Van der Waals Force

Arnaud Landragin, G. Labeyrie, J.-Y. Courtois +2 more

Klaus Bärwinkel, Jürgen Schnack

Arnaud Landragin, J.-Y. Courtois, G. Labeyrie +3 more

We have measured the attractive van der Waals force between a dielectric wall and an atom in its ground state. The method is a direct force measurement in which we use an evanescent wave atomic mirror to balance the van der Waals force and the inertia of the incident atom.

Dmitry S. Petrov

Itai Y. Efrat, Ulf Leonhardt

What has dark energy to do with van der Waals forces? Why does the stress from van der Waals forces appear to violate Maxwell's equations? Why are ultracold atoms good candidates for testing this analog of dark energy? Find out in this paper.

Kicheon Kang

We study the van der Waals-London force, which is typically associated with fluctuating electric dipoles in atoms, in a mesoscopic circuit consisting of two inductively coupled superconducting loops. We investigate the {\em inductive} van der Waals-London interaction using both semiclassical and quantum electrodynamic (QED) approaches. The semiclassical model predicts a repulsive interaction due to anticorrelated current fluctuations. In contrast, the QED framework, which incorporates virtual photon exchange, reveals a predominantly attractive force. A key contribution comes from a state-independent two-photon exchange, which is absent in the semiclassical description and undetectable by spectroscopy. Our study introduces a theoretical framework for exploring the van der Waals force between individual artificial atoms via controlled mesoscopic circuits.