Special Presentation: Kanupriya Sinha

We study collective effects in the fluctuation-induced forces between a system of correlated neutral two-level atoms and a surface. We find that the total Casimir-Polder force on the atoms can be modified via the mutual correlations between the atomic dipoles, showing in particular that a collection of atoms that is super- or sub-radiant with regard to spontaneous emission, also experiences an enhanced or suppressed collective vacuum-induced force respectively. This demonstrates the potential of collective phenomena as a new tool to selectively tailor vacuum forces.