The damping and diffusion of atoms moving in a thermal electromagnetic background

Abstract

The interaction between an atom and the quantized electromagnetic field depends on the position of the atom, leading to a force which is the negative gradient of this interaction. At zero temperature, the mean of this force vanishes, but it has a nonzero value for a thermal electromagnetic background. By applying the Heisenberg equations of motion and the Born–Markov approximation, we obtain the mean and correlation of the force, which show that the center-of-mass motion of the atom is damped and diffused. This approach can be easily extended to multi-level atoms, and it is shown that the damping force and diffusion coefficients are invariant under Galilean transformations. In principle, this effect can be utilized to determine the velocity of the laboratory relative to the thermal background.