2014/01/20 by Jialin Zhang, Hongwei Yu · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #gr-qc #quant-ph
published as Physical Review A 88, 064501 (2013) · 15 pages, 1 figure
arxiv created 2014/01/20 · arxiv updated 2014/01/21
Based on the idea that the vacuum fluctuations of electromagnetic fields can induce instantaneous correlated dipoles, we study the far-zone Casimir-Polder potential between two atoms in the Boulware, Unruh and Hartle-Hawking vacua outside a Schwarzschild black hole. We show that, at spatial infinity, the Casimir-Polder potential in the Boulware vacuum is similar to that in the Minkowski vacuum in flat spacetime with a behavior of R-7, so is in the Unruh vacuum as a result of the backscattering of the Hawking radiation from the black hole off the spacetime curvature. However, the interatomic Casimir-Polder potential in the Hartle-Hawking vacuum behaves like that in a thermal bath at the Hawking temperature. In the region near the event horizon of the black hole, the modifications caused by the space-time curvature make the interatomic Casimir-Polder potential smaller in all three vacuum states.