Zeeman shift of an electron trapped near a surface

Abstract

Boundary dependent corrections to the spin energy eigenvalues of an electron in a weak magnetic field and confined by a harmonic trapping potential are investigated. The electromagnetic field is quantized through a normal mode expansion obeying the Maxwell boundary conditions at the material surface. We couple the electron to this photon field and a classical magnetic field in the Dirac equation, to which we apply the unitary Foldy-Wouthuysen transformation in order to generate a non-relativistic approximation of the Hamiltonian to the desired order. We obtain the Schr\"odinger eigenstates of an electron subject to double confinement by a harmonic potential and a classical magnetic field, and then use these within second-order perturbation theory to calculate the spin energy shift that is attributable to the surface-modified quantized field. We find that a pole at the eigenfrequency of a set of generalized Landau transitions gives dominant oscillatory contributions to the energy shift in the limit of tight harmonic confinement in a weak magnetic field, which also make the energy shift preferable to the magnetic moment for a physically meaningful interpretation.