Quantum radiation pressure on a moving mirror at finite temperature

We compute the radiation pressure force on a moving mirror, in the nonrelativistic approximation, assuming the field to be at temperature T. At high temperature, the force has a dissipative component proportional to the mirror velocity, which results from the Doppler shift of the reflected thermal photons. In the case of a scalar field, the force has also a dispersive component associated with a mass correction Δm. In the electromagnetic case, the separate contributions to the mass correction from the two polarizations cancel. We also derive explicit results in the low temperature regime, and present numerical results for the general case. As an application, we compute the dissipation and decoherence rates for a mirror in a harmonic potential well.