Abstract
Dispersion interactions are long-range interactions between neutral ground-state atoms or molecules, or polarizable bodies in general, due to their common interaction with the quantum electromagnetic field. They arise from the exchange of virtual photons between the atoms, and, in the case of three or more atoms, are not additive. In this review, after having introduced the relevant coupling schemes and effective Hamiltonians, as well as properties of the vacuum fluctuations, we outline the main properties of dispersion interactions, both in the nonretarded (van der Waals) and retarded (Casimir–Polder) regime. We then discuss their deep relation with the existence of the vacuum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field and vacuum energy. We describe some transparent physical models of two- and three-body dispersion interactions, based on dressed vacuum field energy densities and spatial field correlations, which stress their deep connection with vacuum fluctuations and vacuum energy. These models give a clear insight of the physical origin of dispersion interactions, and also provide useful computational tools for their evaluation. We show that this aspect is particularly relevant in more complicated situations, for example when macroscopic boundaries are present. We also review recent results on dispersion interactions for atoms moving with noninertial motions and the strict relation with the Unruh effect, and on resonance interactions between entangled identical atoms in uniformly accelerated motion.
Highlights
Van der Waals and Casimir–Polder dispersion interactions are long-range interactions between two or more neutral atoms or molecules in the vacuum space, arising from their common interaction with the quantum electromagnetic field [1–3]
We have shown that dispersion interactions can be seen as a direct consequence of the existence of vacuum fluctuations, with features directly related to their physical properties
A similar consideration applies to the Lamb shift, for example [2]. This approach is based on the solution of the Heisenberg equations of motion for the field operators, which contains a free term and a source term, the latter depending on the presence of matter, while the former is related to the vacuum field
Summary
Van der Waals and Casimir–Polder dispersion interactions are long-range interactions between two or more neutral atoms or molecules in the vacuum space, arising from their common interaction with the quantum electromagnetic field [1–3]. We will briefly review some recent results for atoms in an excited state and when a boundary condition such as a conducting plane boundary is present, as well as dispersion and resonance interactions for atoms in noninertial motion. All of these results show that zero-point field fluctuations, and their. This review mainly deals with two- and three-body dispersion interactions between atoms, in several physical situations, and their physical origin in terms of the zero-point fluctuations of the electromagnetic field; other relevant aspects of dispersion interactions, for example the effect of magnetodielectric bodies on these interactions in the framework of macroscopic quantum electrodynamics, have been reviewed in [10,11].
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