title: One-loop dominance in the imaginary part of the polarizability: application to blackbody and noncontact van der Waals friction.
abstract: Phenomenologically important quantum dissipative processes include blackbody friction (an atom absorbs counterpropagating blueshifted photons and spontaneously emits them in all directions, losing kinetic energy) and noncontact van der Waals friction (in the vicinity of a dielectric surface, the mirror charges of the constituent particles inside the surface experience drag, slowing the atom). The theoretical predictions for these processes are modified upon a rigorous quantum electrodynamic treatment, which shows that the one-loop "correction" yields the dominant contribution to the off-resonant, gauge-invariant, imaginary part of the atom's polarizability at room temperature, for typical atom-surface interactions. The tree-level contribution to the polarizability dominates at high temperature.
authors: Department of Physics, Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, Missouri 65409, USA.
authors: U D
authors: UD
authors: Jentschura
authors: International Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, Księcia Trojdena 4, 02-109 Warsaw, Poland and Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw, Pasteura 5, 02-093 Warsaw, Poland.
authors: G
authors: G
authors: Łach
authors: Klaus-Tschira-Gebäude, Im Neuenheimer Feld 226, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany.
authors: M
authors: M
authors: De Kieviet
authors: Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw, Pasteura 5, 02-093 Warsaw, Poland.
authors: K
authors: K
authors: Pachucki