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arXiv:gr-qc/0604116 · Physical review. D. Particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology/Physical review. D. Particles and fields

Spontaneous excitation of an accelerated hydrogen atom coupled with electromagnetic vacuum fluctuations

Zhiying Zhu, Hong Wei Yu, Shizhuan Lu

Published May 4, 2006• 89 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

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.

DOI
10.1103/physrevd.73.107501

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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 study the spontaneous excitation of a uniformly accelerated two-level atom nonlinearly coupled to vacuum Dirac field fluctuations using the formalism proposed by Dalibard, Dupont-Roc, and Cohen-Tannoudji and generalized by us to the present case in the current paper. We find that a cross term involving both vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction appears, which is absent in the linear coupling cases such as an atom interacting with vacuum scalar or electromagnetic fluctuations. Furthermore, the contribution of this term actually dominates over that of radiation reaction. Thus, the mean rate of change of the atomic energy can no longer be distinctively separated into only the contributions of vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction as in the scalar and electromagnetic cases where the coupling is linear. Our result shows that a uniformly accelerated atom interacting with vacuum Dirac fluctuations would spontaneously excite and a unique feature in sharp contrast to the scalar and electromagnetic cases is the appearance of a term in the excitation rate, which is proportional to the quartic acceleration.
We study the resonance interaction between two uniformly accelerated identical atoms, one excited and the other in the ground state, prepared in a correlated (symmetric or antisymmetric) state and interacting with the scalar field or the electromagnetic field in the vacuum state. In this case (resonance interaction), the interatomic interaction is a second-order effect in the atom-field coupling. We separate the contributions of vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction to the resonance energy shift of the system, and show that only radiation reaction contributes, while Unruh thermal fluctuations do not affect the resonance interaction. We also find that beyond a characteristic length scale related to the atomic acceleration, nonthermal effects in the radiation-reaction contribution change the distance dependence of the resonance interaction. Finally, we find that previously unidentified features appear, compared with the scalar field case, when the interaction with the electromagnetic field is considered, as a consequence of the peculiar nature of the vacuum quantum noise of the electromagnetic field in a relativistically accelerated background.
The contribution of vacuum fluctuations and the radiation reaction to the energy-level shifts of a hydrogen atom, moving with uniform acceleration and interacting with the electromagnetic field, is considered. It is found that the reaction field contribution is not affected by the acceleration, whereas the vacuum fluctuations' contribution depends on the acceleration. The differences with previous results for an accelerated two-level atom interacting with a scalar field are discussed in detail; in particular, it is shown that the effect of electromagnetic vacuum fluctuations on atomic level shifts, contrarily to the scalar field case, is not totally equivalent to that of a thermal field. It is argued that this lack of equivalence should be observable.
We study the energy level shifts of an accelerated multilevel atom in dipole coupling to the derivative of a quantum massless scalar field and separately calculate the contributions of vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction to the shifts. It is found that, in contrast to the case of a monopole-like interaction, both the vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction contributions are changed by acceleration, and they all contain non-thermal correction terms. Our results suggest that the effect of acceleration on the energy shifts is dependent on the type of the interaction between the atom and the quantum field.
Recently, a new physical picture for the spontaneous excitation of a uniformly accelerated two-level atom has been put forward [1]. Following a quantum optical approach it is based on the distinction of the two competing mechanisms which operate to excite an atom in the quantum vacuum: vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction. Vacuum fluctuations tend to excite an atom in its ground state and de-excite it in an excited state. On the other hand, radiation reaction leads always to a loss of internal excitation energy. For an inertial atom in the ground state, the two contributions cancel exactly, so that a very sublime balance between vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction prevents the spontaneous excitation of the atom [2]. If the atom is in the excited state, both contribution add up to the well-known spontaneous emission rate. It has been shown in [1] that uniform acceleration will disturb this balance. Spontaneous transitions from the ground state to the excited state become possible: the Unruh effect [3].
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.