Detecting modified vacuum fluctuations due to presence of a boundary by means of the geometric phase

Abstract

We study the geometric phase acquired by an inertial atom whose trajectories are parallel to a reflecting boundary due its coupling to vacuum fluctuations of electromagnetic fields, by treating the atom as an open quantum system in a bath of the fluctuating vacuum fields, and show that the phase is position dependent as a result of the presence of the boundary which modifies the field quantum fluctuations. Our result therefore suggests a possible way of detecting vacuum fluctuations in experiments involving geometric phase.