2010/08/31 by J. D. Carter, J. D. D. Martin · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Mathematical Theories and Applications #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Statistical Mechanics and Entropy #physics.atom-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.83.032902
published as Phys. Rev. A, v. 83, 032902 (2011) · 7 pages, 2 figures, Revised version contains an illustrative scanning electron microscope image
arxiv created 2011/03/07 · openalex publication_date 2011/03/07 · arxiv updated 2013/03/05 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The statistical properties of patch electric fields due to a polycrystalline metal surface are calculated. The fluctuations in the electric field scale like 1/z2 when z\ensuremath≫w, where z is the distance to the surface and w is the characteristic length scale of the surface patches. For typical thermally evaporated gold surfaces these field fluctuations are comparable to the image field of an elementary charge, and scale in the same way with distance to the surface. Expressions for calculating the statistics of the inhomogeneous broadening of Rydberg-atom energies due to patch electric fields are presented. Spatial variations in the patch fields over the Rydberg orbit are found to be insignificant.