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Physical Review Letters

Photon Spectrum in Laser-Induced Autoionization

Maciej Lewenstein, Joseph W. Haus, Kazimierz Rza̧zdot ewski

Published Feb 7, 1983• 50 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A quantum electrodynamic treatment of an autoionizing atom excited by a laser field is presented. As the main result, the authors present the average number of photons emitted into a particular mode of the electromagnetic field. In the case of a symmetric autoionizing resonance, the spectrum presented here resembles the power spectrum in resonance fluorescence of a two-level atom. For an asymmetric resonance, however, this spectrum manifests the confluence of coherences. The total number of scattered photons has a maximum at the confluence intensity. The spectrum is asymmetric in this case.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.50.417

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A quantum electrodynamic treatment of an autoionizing atom excited by a laser field is presented. As the main result, the authors present the average number of photons emitted into a particular mode of the electromagnetic field. In the case of a symmetric autoionizing resonance, the spectrum presented here resembles the power spectrum in resonance fluorescence of a two-level atom. For an asymmetric resonance, however, this spectrum manifests the confluence of coherences. The total number of scattered photons has a maximum at the confluence intensity. The spectrum is asymmetric in this case.
The fluorescence produced by an autoionizing state under strong pumping by a coherent laser field is considered. It is shown how the spectrum of emitted photons and the total number of photons are related to the two-time and single-time atomic expectation values, and explicit expressions are derived for them. Numerical results for the time development of the number of photons ejected are presented for finite times and in the long-time limit. The photon spectra are shown to exhibit ac Stark splitting of the states involved. The spectrum is a doublet for transitions to a stable final state and a triplet for transitions connected back to the initial, strongly driven state. The decay of an autoionizing state in the absence of a laser driving field is considered, and the square of the Fano qqq value is interpreted as the ratio of two decay rates.
We consider a single-photon bound–bound and bound–free transitions induced by short, coherent laser pulses. Fluorescence energy spectra are calculated. In the case of the fluorescence to a side level, a number of analytic results are presented. For the resonance-fluorescence case the compact Bloch-like equations are derived for the ionization to an autoionization resonance and numerically analyzed. The multipeak structure of the spectra previously found in the simplified models is shown to be a universal feature. The number of maxima of the spectrum increases with the area of the pulse.
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What happens to a two-level atom in an intense laser field? The system resembles the hydrogen atom in its relative simplicity, but only in the last couple of years have experiments shed much light on its behavior. Intensity-dependent resonant light scattering has been studied in two-level atoms by looking at the spectrum and more recently, by observing the time development of fluorescence—photon antibunching. Such scattering is one of the few electromagnetic phenomena that apparently cannot be described by semiclassical arguments; a quantum field theoretical approach appears essential.
We consider the possible physical processes that may arise in a three-level atom when only two of its levels interact with a strong electromagnetic field and when the atomic transition frequency is nearly equal to once and twice the frequency of the laser field, respectively. There have been found pronounced cooperative effects in the spectrum of the two-level system, which is in resonance with the laser field, arising from the presence of the third level. The excitation spectra describing the transitions from the first excited state into the second excited state and from that to the ground state consist, apart from the two central peaks, of two pairs of sidebands which are induced by the laser field of the neighbouring system. Detailed expressions of the spectral functions for the physical processes of one- and two-photon resonance fluorescence have been derived and discussed in the limit of high photon densities. The excitation spectrum of the low frequency modes has been considered and discussed in detail. It is found that quantum beats in spontaneous emission may appear in the spectra of the one- and two-photon resonance fluorescence arising from the interference between the two atomic transition frequencies and the frequency of the laser field. The importance of the low frequency modes that occur in the processes in question has been pointed out.