2005/11/30 by R. Fermani, Stefan Scheel, S. Scheel +1
Physics and Astronomy · #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Mechanical and Optical Resonators #Quantum optics and atomic interactions #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.73.032902
published as Phys. Rev. A 73, 032902 (2006) (9 pages) · 9 pages, 2 figures
openalex publication_date 2006/03/08 · arxiv created 2006/03/09 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We present a first-principles derivation of spatial atomic-sublevel decoherence near dielectric and metallic surfaces. The theory is based on the electromagnetic-field quantization in absorbing dielectric media. We derive an expression for the time variation of the off-diagonal matrix element of the atomic density matrix for arbitrarily shaped substrates. For planar multilayered substrates we find that for small lateral separations of the atom's possible positions the spatial coherence decreases quadratically with the separation and inversely to the squared atom-surface distance.