Renormalization and Universality of Van der Waals forces

Abstract

Renormalization ideas can profitably be exploited in conjunction with the superposition principle of boundary conditions in the description of model independent and universal scaling features of the singular and long range Van der Waals force between neutral atoms. The dominance of the leading power law is highlighted both in the scattering as well as in the bound state problem. The role of off-shell two-body unitarity and causality within the Effective Field Theory framework on the light of universality and scaling at low energies is analyzed.

Comments: 10 pages, 9 figures. Presented at 19th International IUPAP Conference On Few-Body Problems In Physics (FB 19) 31 Aug - 5 Sep 2009, Bonn, Germany