Deflection of an atomic beam by the Casimir force
E. A. Hinds, Charles I. Sukenik, M. G. Boshier +1 more
The force experienced by an atom inside a parallel‐plate waveguide is one of the basic phenomena of cavity QED. The full QED expression for this force is a complicated function, which depends upon the atomic oscillator strengths, the position of the atom, and the width of the cavity. For ground‐state atoms one can distinguish two simple limits. (i) When the gap is sufficiently small, the force takes on the form of a van der Waals interaction between the instantaneous electric dipole of the atom and its multiple images in the walls of the waveguide. (ii) In a large gap, when the atom is far from the walls, the van der Waals force is suppressed and the main force predicted by theory is due to the Casimir interaction of the atom with the cavity vacuum field. Whereas the van der Waals force between atoms and conductors has previously been studied experimentally, the Casimir force has not. Here we report the first observation of atom deflection by the Casimir force.
AIP conference proceedings•Jan 1, 1991•4 citations