Casimir and Van Der Waals Attraction
Despite this, there is some doubt as to the physical origin of quantum reflection from solid surfaces. As was briefly mentioned above, the potential in the intermediate region between the regions dominated by the Casimir-Polder and Van der Waals interactions requires an explicit Quantum Electrodynamical calculation for the particular state and type of atom incident on the surface. Such a calculation is very difficult. Indeed, there is no reason to suppose that this potential is solely attractive within the intermediate region. Thus the reflection could simply be explained by a repulsive force, which would make the phenomenon not quite so surprising. Furthermore, a similar dependence for reflectivity on the incident velocity is observed in the case of the adsorption of particles in vicinity of a surface. In the simplest case, such absorption could be described with a non-Hermitian potential (i.e. one where probability is not conserved). Until 2006, the published papers interpreted the reflection in terms of a Hermitian potential
this assumption allows to build a quantitative theory .
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