  The three-body Casimir-Polder potential between one excited and two
ground-state atoms is evaluated. A physical model based on the dressed field
correlations of vacuum fluctuations is used, generalizing a model previously
introduced for three ground-state atoms. Although the three-body potential with
one excited atom is already known in the literature, our model gives new
insights on the nature of non-additive Casimir-Polder forces with one or more
excited atoms.
