Coupling atomic excitation and surface modes in dielectric cavity-QED

Summary form only given. The topic of quantum cavity electrodynamics is to describe the coupling between the fluctuations of an atomic system and the vacuum e.m. field, when special boundary conditions are imposed by a cavity to the vacuum field. A realistic description of these boundary conditions is hence of crucial importance. For such a purpose, the unavoidable dispersive spectral properties of any material cavity cannot be ignored when dealing with (temporal) fluctuations. For these reasons, we have embarked on an (experimental) analysis of the resonant long-range coupling between atomic excitation and the surface modes of a cavity (most often restricted to a simple wall, i.e. a flat open cavity). In our present investigations, we are concerned with the exploration of the dissipative counterpart of the resonant atom-surface van der Waals coupling.