  We discuss heating and decoherence in traps for ions and neutral particles
close to metallic surfaces. We focus on simple trap geometries and compute
noise spectra of thermally excited electromagnetic fields. If the trap is
located in the near field of the substrate, the field fluctuations are largely
increased compared to the level of the blackbody field, leading to much shorter
coherence and life times of the trapped atoms. The corresponding time constants
are computed for ion traps and magnetic traps. Analytical estimates for the
size dependence of the noise spectrum are given. We finally discuss prospects
for the coherent transport of matter waves in integrated surface waveguides.
