Antonio Noto, Roberto Passante
We consider the interatomic Casimir-Polder interaction energy between two neutral ground-state atoms moving in the vacuum space with the same uniform acceleration. We assume the acceleration orthogonal to their separation, so that their mutual distance remains constant. Using a model of the Casimir-Polder interaction based on the interaction between the instantaneous atomic dipole moments, which are induced and correlated by the zero-point field fluctuations, we evaluate the interaction energy between the two accelerating atoms in terms of quantities expressed in the laboratory reference frame. We find that the dependence of the Casimir-Polder interaction between the atoms from the distance is different with respect to the case of atoms at rest, and the relation of our results with the Unruh effect is discussed. We show that in the near zone a new term proportional to $R^{-5}$ adds to the usual $R^{-6}$ behavior, and in the far zone a term proportional to $R^{-6}$ adds to the usual $R^{-7}$ behavior, making the interaction of a longer range. We also find that the interaction energy is time-dependent, and the physical meaning of this result is discussed. In particular, we find acceleration-dependent corrections to the $R^{-7}$ (far zone) and $R^{-6}$ (near zone) proportional to $a^2t^2/c^2$; this suggests that significant changes to the Casimir-Polder interaction between the atoms could be obtained if sufficiently long times are taken, without necessity of the extremely high accelerations required by other known manifestations of the Unruh effect.
View original:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.5786
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