Abstract
The distance dependence of the anisotropic atom-wall interaction is studied. The central result is the 1/z(6) quadrupolar anisotropy decay in the retarded Casimir-Polder regime. Analysis of the transition region between nonretarded van der Waals regime (in 1/z(3)) and Casimir-Polder regime shows that the anisotropy crossover occurs at very short distances from the surface, on the order of 0.03 lambda, where lambda is the atom characteristic wavelength. Possible experimental verifications of this distance dependence using surface-induced inelastic transitions are discussed.