Berlin 2014 – scientific programme

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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 16: Poster: Quantum information, micromechanical oscillators, matter wave optics, precision measurements and metrology

Q 16.65: Poster

Monday, March 17, 2014, 16:30–18:30, Spree-Palais

Tomography of Dispersion forces — •Johannes Fiedler and Stefan Scheel — Universität Rostock, Institut für Physik, Rostock, Germany

Dispersion forces (DF), such as Casimir-Polder (CP) forces between atoms and macroscopic bodies, are all effective electromagnetic forces caused by ground-state fluctuations of the electromagnetic field [1]. Because of their short interaction range, they can play a major role in situations where two objects are brought close together. For example, in experiments with trapped ultracold atoms [2] and lead to unwanted losses. In molecular interferometry (MI), these CP interactions influence the intensity distribution in the interference pattern [3]. The exact quantative description of dispersion forces is typically very complicated as it requires exact knowledge of all optical properties of the involved objects. In particular, solid-state optical responses are usually not well known. In order to experimentally determine DF, we propose a tomographic reconstruction method. Specifically, we envisage using the tomographic MI [4] to reconstruct the interaction potential between a molecule and a solid grating. We show that it is possible to reconstruct physical quantities such as the geometry of the scatterer and molecular properties such as bond lengths [5] from the tomographic data.

[1] S. Scheel and S.Y. Buhmann. Acta Phys. Slov. 58, 675 (2008).

[2] Y.J. Lin et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 050404 (2004).

[3] B. Brezger et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 100404 (2002).

[4] T. Juffmann et al. Nature Nanotechnology 7, 297 (2012).

[5] Grisenti et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 85, 2284 (2000).