Interference and spontaneous emission

Arkadiusz Orłowski, W. Żakowicz

Sergey G. Rautian

Hwang Lee, Pavel G. Polynkin

Pieter Kok

Shi‐Yao Zhu, Lorenzo M. Narducci, Marlan O. Scully

The constructive and destructive nature of the interference for the spontaneous emission from a three-level atom have been discussed by using dressed states. There is an interference if the upper level of the spontaneous emission is driven by a coherent field, while there is no interference if the lower level of the spontaneous emission is driven by the field. What interference (constructive or destructive one) we will get at a fixed frequency depends on the initial condition of the atom.

Kishore T. Kapale, Marlan O. Scully, Shi-Yao Zhu +1 more

We investigate the steady-state spontaneous emission of a V-type three-level atom, with the coherence between the two upper levels modified and controlled via incoherent pumping to a fourth auxiliary level. The external pumping gives us an easily controllable handle in manipulating the spontaneous emission to such an extent that, under certain conditions, complete quenching of spontaneous emission is possible. We also show that even the interference between the decay channels, which is considered a key requirement in spontaneous emission quenching through quantum interference, is not essential to achieve near 100% trapping and almost complete suppression of spontaneous emission. Thus we provide a scheme for spontaneous emission quenching which can be easily realized experimentally.