Two-atom van der Waals forces with one atom excited: The identical-atom limit

Optimized Atom Interferometer Design Including van der Waals Interactions

The problem of designing an atom interferometer with optimum sensitivity to de Broglie wave phase shifts is revisited. Because van der Waals interactions affect how efficiently material gratings work as beam splitters, we find the optimum open fraction for each of the gratings in a three-grating Mach Zehnder atom interferometer depends on the van der Waals interaction strength as well as the at...

Observation of atom wave phase shifts induced by van der Waals atom-surface interactions.

The development of nanotechnology and atom optics relies on understanding how atoms behave and interact with their environment. Isolated atoms can exhibit wavelike (coherent) behavior with a corresponding de Broglie wavelength and phase which can be affected by nearby surfaces. Here an atom interferometer is used to measure the phase shift of Na atom waves induced by the walls of a 50 nm wide c...

Average and extreme multi-atom Van der Waals interactions: Strong coupling of multi-atom Van der Waals interactions with covalent bonding

BACKGROUND The prediction of ligand binding or protein structure requires very accurate force field potentials - even small errors in force field potentials can make a 'wrong' structure (from the billions possible) more stable than the single, 'correct' one. However, despite huge efforts to optimize them, currently-used all-atom force fields are still not able, in a vast majority of cases, even...

Short Distance Relativistic Atom-atom Forces *

60 Garden Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138 (March 1, 1999) About fifty years ago two important papers appeared describing novel interactions. One, by Casimir, discussed the case of two interacting walls [1] and the other, by Casimir and Polder, considered the interactions between an atom and a wall and between two atoms [2]. The history and some of the many interesting aspects of these in...

Exploring the van der Waals Atom-Surface attraction in the nanometric range