Abstract
We investigate the influence of atomic uniform motion on radiative energy shifts of a multilevel atom when it interacts with black-body radiation. Our analysis reveals that the atomic energy shifts depend crucially on three factors: the temperature of black-body thermal radiation, atomic velocity, and atomic polarizability. In the low-temperature limit, the presence of atomic uniform motion always enhances the effect of the thermal field on the atomic energy shifts. However, in the high-temperature limit, the atomic uniform motion enhances the effect of the thermal field for an atom polarizable perpendicular to the atomic velocity but weakens it for an atom polarizable parallel to the atomic velocity. Our work indicates that the physical properties of atom–field coupling systems can in principle be regulated and controlled by the combined action of the thermal field and the atomic uniform motion.
Highlights
(δ Eb)0 refers to the known Lamb shift term caused by vacuum fluctuations. (δ Eb)T,v is exactly the modification of the energy shift caused by the combination of the black-body radiation field and the atomic uniform motion, which depends on the temperature of the thermal field, the atomic velocity, and the atomic polarizability
Using the DDC formalism, we have separately calculated the contributions of thermal fluctuations and radiation reaction to the energy shifts of a uniformly moving multilevel atom in a black-body radiation field
The result shows that the contribution of thermal fluctuations is strongly affected by the combined action of thermal radiation and atomic uniform motion
Summary
In the framework of open quantum systems, Papadatos and Anastopoulos analyzed the thermodynamics of a uniformly moving quantum system interacting with a static thermal bath of the massless quantum scalar field [56] Their analysis shows that the heat bath, in motion in the reference frame of the quantum system, is equivalent to a continuum of heat baths at rest with respect to the moving system, each with a different temperature. We recently investigated the influence of this characteristic on the energy shift of a two-level atom coupled to a thermal bath of a massless quantum scalar field [58].
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