2000/01/06 by R. Marani, Roberta Marani, Laurent Cognet +7 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #physics.atom-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.61.053402
published as R. Marani et al., Phys. Rev. A, 61, (2000), 053402 · 11 pages, including 6 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. A, RevTeX source
arxiv created 2000/01/06 · openalex publication_date 2000/04/06 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We show that atomic interference in the reflection from two suitably polarized evanescent waves is sensitive to retardation effects in the atom-surface interaction for specific experimental parameters. We study the limit of short and long atomic de Broglie wavelengths. The former case is analyzed in the semiclassical approximation (Landau-Zener model). The latter represents a quantum regime and is analyzed by solving numerically the associated coupled Schr"odinger equations. We consider a specific experimental scheme and show the results for rubidium (short wavelength) and the much lighter metastable helium atom (long wavelength). The merits of each case are then discussed.