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Physical Review Letters

Dynamical suppression of spontaneous emission

Maciej Lewenstein, THOMAS W. MOSSBERG, and R. J. Glauber

Published Aug 17, 1987• 130 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We study the influence of a strong resonant driving field on the spectral properties of a single, cavity-confined, two-level atom. Under conditions of atom-cavity resonance, the lines of the Mollow resonance fluorescence triplet are found to narrow with increasing driving field strength, indicating a dynamical decoupling of the atom from the vacuum field.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.59.775

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A cavity-modified master equation is derived for a coherently driven two-level atom coupled to a single-mode cavity in the bad cavity limit, in which the cavity frequency is tuned to either the center or one of the sidebands of the Mollow triplet. The atomic populations in both the bare- and dressed-state representations are analyzed in terms of the cavity-modified transition rates. In the bare-state basis, the role of the cavity may be interpreted as enhancing the stimulated absorption of the atom while suppressing the stimulated emission. The bare-state population may thus be inverted under appropriate conditions. The dressed-state inversion, however, originates from the enhancement of the atom-cavity interaction when the cavity is resonant with the atomic dressed-state transition. We show that two-phase quadratures of the atomic polarization decay at different rates. The decay of the in-phase (or out-of-phase) quadrature may be greatly inhibited as the driving intensity increases, depending on the cavity resonant frequency. The spectrum of the atomic fluorescence emitted out the side of the cavity is also studied. The spectral profiles are sensitive to the cavity frequency. When the cavity frequency is tuned to the center of the Mollow resonances, the fluorescence spectrum is symmetrical with three peaks whose linewidths and heights are intensity dependent. When the cavity frequency is tuned to one of the Mollow sidebands, however, it is asymmetric, and the central peak and the sideband on resonance with the cavity can be significantly suppressed for strong driving fields. All three spectral lines can be narrowed by increasing the Rabi frequency. The physics of these striking spectral features is explored in the dressed-state basis. We also investigate the probe absorption spectrum. When the cavity frequency is tuned to the center of the Mollow fluorescence triplet, the central component exhibits a Lorentzian line shape, while the side bands show the Rayleigh-wing line shape. Probe gain may occur at line center due to cavity-induced, bare-state population inversion. When the cavity is tuned to resonance with one sideband, only two sidebands, with Lorentzian profiles, dominate. Gain can occur at the sideband far off resonant with the cavity. The sideband gain is a consequence of an unbalanced dressed-state population distribution.

Physical Review A•Aug 1, 1998•35 citations
We study the influence of a strong resonant driving field on the spectral properties of a single, cavity-confined, two-level atom. Under conditions of atom-cavity resonance, the lines of the Mollow resonance fluorescence triplet are found to narrow with increasing driving field strength, indicating a dynamical decoupling of the atom from the vacuum field.
We report a Rydberg-atom experiment, demonstrating the dynamic suppression of spontaneous emission in a resonant microwave cavity driven by a resonant external field. If the Rabi frequency of the injected field is larger than the atomic and cavity line widths, the atoms almost completely decouple from the cavity mode due to suppressed field fluctuations at the sideband frequencies of the Mollow triplet. This was achieved with about 100 microwave photons in the cavity. The reduced decay rate is a consequence of non-Markovian dynamics induced by the finite cavity-response time.
We examine resonance fluorescence of a two-level atom in a squeezed vacuum, under the condition that the squeezing bandwidth is much narrower than the Rabi splitting of the Mollow triplet. For a suitable choice of the relative phase between the squeezed vacuum and coherent driving field, we find significant narrowing of the Rabi peaks and inhibited population decay. These results are in marked contrast to previous broadband squeezing analyses, which predict strong broadening of the Rabi peaks and enhanced population decay. We explore the connection between our work and that on the dynamical suppression of spontaneous emission via strongly driven resonance fluorescence in a cavity [Lewenstein, Mossberg, and Glauber, Phys. Rev. Lett. 59, 775 (1987)]. By modifying this work to incorporate squeezing of the cavity modes, we are able to combine the features of both systems, and thereby predict strong inhibition of the decay of all three components of the Bloch vector in a possible experimental configuration.
There is increasing interest in the photon statistics and spectroscopic properties of the radiation from atoms confined in an optical cavity. Effects such as the cavity enhancement and inhibition of spontaneous emission, which were first observed using microwave cavities, have recently been measured at optical frequencies.1 Recent measurements of squeezing and the dynamic effects of single-quantum-level splittings also demonstrate the possibilities for quantum-statistical studies of coupled atom-cavity systems at optical frequencies.2 We study a single two-level atom confined inside an optical cavity which is driven by coherent light in resonance with both cavity and atom. For weak driving field intensities we have calculated the spectrum of the light transmitted by the cavity and fluorescence out the sides of the cavity.
We calculate the steady-state spectrum of resonance fluorescence from a two-level atom coupled to a single cavity mode and driven by a strong, in general off-resonance, external field. In the strong-coupling limit, each Mollow triplet component is split into a multiplet, whose detailed structure depends on the atom–cavity coupling, the cavity and spontaneous emission decay constants, and the photon-number distribution of the cavity mode. The dressed states for this system are identified, and the spectral features are interpreted in terms of transitions among these dressed states. In particular, we find that the central component of the central multiplet can have a strongly subnatural linewidth.
A cavity-modified master equation is derived for a coherently driven two-level atom coupled to a single-mode cavity in the bad cavity limit, in which the cavity frequency is tuned to either the center or one of the sidebands of the Mollow triplet. The atomic populations in both the bare- and dressed-state representations are analyzed in terms of the cavity-modified transition rates. In the bare-state basis, the role of the cavity may be interpreted as enhancing the stimulated absorption of the atom while suppressing the stimulated emission. The bare-state population may thus be inverted under appropriate conditions. The dressed-state inversion, however, originates from the enhancement of the atom-cavity interaction when the cavity is resonant with the atomic dressed-state transition. We show that two-phase quadratures of the atomic polarization decay at different rates. The decay of the in-phase (or out-of-phase) quadrature may be greatly inhibited as the driving intensity increases, depending on the cavity resonant frequency. The spectrum of the atomic fluorescence emitted out the side of the cavity is also studied. The spectral profiles are sensitive to the cavity frequency. When the cavity frequency is tuned to the center of the Mollow resonances, the fluorescence spectrum is symmetrical with three peaks whose linewidths and heights are intensity dependent. When the cavity frequency is tuned to one of the Mollow sidebands, however, it is asymmetric, and the central peak and the sideband on resonance with the cavity can be significantly suppressed for strong driving fields. All three spectral lines can be narrowed by increasing the Rabi frequency. The physics of these striking spectral features is explored in the dressed-state basis. We also investigate the probe absorption spectrum. When the cavity frequency is tuned to the center of the Mollow fluorescence triplet, the central component exhibits a Lorentzian line shape, while the side bands show the Rayleigh-wing line shape. Probe gain may occur at line center due to cavity-induced, bare-state population inversion. When the cavity is tuned to resonance with one sideband, only two sidebands, with Lorentzian profiles, dominate. Gain can occur at the sideband far off resonant with the cavity. The sideband gain is a consequence of an unbalanced dressed-state population distribution.