Radiative Energy Shifts of an Accelerated Multilevel Atom Coupled to the Derivative of a Scalar Field

We study the energy level shifts of an accelerated multilevel atom in dipole coupling to the derivative of a quantum massless scalar field and separately calculate the contributions of vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction to the shifts. It is found that, in contrast to the case of a monopole-like interaction, both the vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction contributions are changed by acceleration, and they all contain non-thermal correction terms. Our results suggest that the effect of acceleration on the energy shifts is dependent on the type of the interaction between the atom and the quantum field.