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Casimir-Polder interaction from exact diagonalization and state mixing near surfaces

Dispersion forces have a sizeable effect on the energy levels of highly excited Rydberg atoms when brought close to material surfaces. Rydberg atoms experience energy shifts in the GHz range at micrometer distances, suggestive of considerable state admixture. We show that despite the non-applicability of perturbation theory for Rydberg atoms near a surface, the energy shift due to the dispersion interaction can be obtained from an exact diagonalization of the interaction Hamiltonian by finding the zeros of the Pick function. Moreover, we show that contrary to intuition from single-mode approaches, surface-induced state mixing is generally suppressed even for large interaction energies. We give a tailored example where mixing is observable despite this effect.