Quantum Institute: Visitor Schedule

The Quantum Lunch is regularly held on Thursdays in the Theoretical Division Conference Room, TA-3, Building 123, Room 121.
For more information, contact Diego Dalvit.
To add your name to the Quantum Lunch email list, contact Charlotte Lehman

Thursday, March 25, 2010
12:30 PM - 2:00 PM

Speaker: Ryan Behunin (University of Maryland)

Technical Host: Diego Dalvit

TOPIC: Nonequilibrium forces between neutral atoms and surfaces

Abstract
In this talk I’ll present a new set of techniques to describe the force between atoms, and atoms and surfaces, valid for fully nonequilibrium conditions. I’ll show how these methods can be used to describe the van der Waals force, and how they go beyond previous treatments by being valid for fully dynamical and nonequilibrium conditions. In the presence of a perfectly reflecting mirror (boundary condition on the field) an equation of motion for the atom’s mean position is derived from which the atom-surface force can be obtained. Lastly, I’ll show how the atom-surface force for realistic materials can be derived by appealing to the microscopic physics of the surface elements. Integrating out the microscopic degrees of freedom of the surface leads to an effective permittivity and a stochastic source for the field. The force is then obtained through a combination of quantum and stochastic expectation values.