Abstract

We report on new mechanical measurements for determining the van der Waals interaction[1] between a ground state atom and a dielectric wall. The idea [2] is to release laser cooled atoms with a well defined kinetic energy onto an evanescent wave atomic mirror. The atoms bounce if the reflecting potential barrier height is larger than their kinetic energy. The height of the reflecting potential, which is the sum of the repulsive dipole potential and of the attractive van der Waals potential (Fig. 1), can be calculated as a function of the evanescent wave parameters.

© 1996 Optical Society of America