2015/10/15 by Puxun Wu, Hongwei Yu
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Atom (system on chip) #Atomic physics #Condensed matter physics #Dielectric #Lambda #Permittivity #Physics #Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect #Quantum mechanics #Slab #Substrate (aquarium) #Thermal #Thermal Radiation and Cooling Technologies #Thermal equilibrium #Thermalisation #Thermodynamics #Wavelength #gr-qc #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.92.062503
15 pages, 2 figures, to appear in PRA
arxiv created 2015/10/15 · openalex publication_date 2015/12/16 · arxiv updated 2016/01/20 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We study the thermalization of an elementary quantum system modeled by a two-level atom interacting with stationary electromagnetic fields out of thermal equilibrium near a dielectric slab. The slab is held at a temperature different from that of the region where the atom is located. We find that when the slab is nonabsorbing and nondispersive, out-of-thermal-equilibrium effects exist only when its thickness is infinite. In other words, no out-of-thermal-equilibrium effects appear for a real dielectric slab of a finite thickness d. Furthermore, a finite thick dielectric slab with a tiny imaginary part in the relative permittivity Im\ensuremathε behaves like a half-space dielectric substrate if \fracIm\ensuremathε√Re\ensuremathε\ensuremath-1\fracd\ensuremathλ0>1 is satisfied, where \ensuremathλ0 is the transition wavelength of the atom. This condition can serve as a guide for an experimental verification, using a dielectric substrate of a finite thickness, of the effects that arise from out-of-thermal-equilibrium fluctuations with a half-space (infinite thickness) dielectric.