Casimir forces and quantum friction from Ginzburg radiation in atomic Bose-Einstein Condensates

We theoretically propose an experimentally viable scheme to use an impurity atom in an atomicBose-Einstein condensate, in order to realize condensed-matter analogs of quantum vacuum effects.In a suitable atomic level configuration, the collisional interaction between the impurity atom andthe density fluctuations in the condensate can be tailored to closely reproduce the electric-dipolecoupling of quantum electrodynamics. By virtue of this analogy, we recover and extend the paradigmof electromagnetic vacuum forces to the domain of cold atoms, showing in particular the emergence,at supersonic atomic speeds, of a novel power-law scaling of the Casimir force felt by the atomicimpurity, as well as the occurrence of a quantum frictional force, accompanied by the Ginzburg emission of Bogoliubov quanta. Observable consequences of these quantum vacuum effects in realisticspectroscopic experiments are discussed.