Affiliation:
1. School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK
Abstract
We investigate the effects of the electromagnetic vacuum field on a harmonically bound electron. We show that in the electric-dipole approximation the model atom couples only to an effective one-dimensional electric field. In a simplified form, in which the problem is reduced to a single spatial dimension, we determine, analytically, the form of the ground state and discuss the significance of this state.
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