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Journal of Physics A Mathematical and General

Intensity correlations in resonance fluorescence with atomic number fluctuations

H. J. Carmichael, P. D. Drummond, Pierre Meystre, Daniel F. Walls

Published May 1, 1978• 40 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The experimental conditions under which the intensity correlation function from a single atom undergoing resonance fluorescence may be observed are studied. As was pointed out by Jakeman et al. (1977), even under optimum conditions the number of fluctuations in the atomic beam prevent a direct observation of photon antibunching under the subsequent normalisation scheme used by Kimble et al. (1977). However, a direct observation of photon antibunching is possible in principle by adopting alternative normalisation schemes of the intensity correlation function.

DOI
10.1088/0305-4470/11/5/007

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The experimental conditions under which the intensity correlation function from a single atom undergoing resonance fluorescence may be observed are studied. As was pointed out by Jakeman et al. (1977), even under optimum conditions the number of fluctuations in the atomic beam prevent a direct observation of photon antibunching under the subsequent normalisation scheme used by Kimble et al. (1977). However, a direct observation of photon antibunching is possible in principle by adopting alternative normalisation schemes of the intensity correlation function.
The normalised intensity correlation function of resonance fluorescence radiation from two-level atoms is studied in various respects. In the first part of the paper the author discusses only interference effects for several uncoupled, linearly arranged, atoms. It is shown that, depending on the distance between the atoms, the direction of observation and the strength of the driving field, an antibunching effect as well as a very big bunching effect may be observed. In the second part of the paper he studies for the case of two atoms and weak external fields the influence of the interaction between the atoms by means of a perturbation theory. It is shown that the coupling between the atoms strongly modifies the normalised intensity correlation function in comparison with the case of uncoupled atoms. He takes as the driving field a coherent external field as well as laser light and thermal light.
We suggest that the statistical properties of the scattered radiation in resonance-fluorescence experiments may be affected significantly by the existence of atomic correlations. The scattered light spectrum from two- and three-atom collective systems has been calculated and compared with the one-atom spectrum. The differences are quite significant for weak fields, but become less pronounced as the intensity of the driving field is increased. In addition, we have calculated the scattered intensity correlation function for collectively interacting systems, and found that its behavior is very different from that of the single-atom intensity correlation function, both for weak and strong incident fields. The implications of our findings for the observation of photon antibunching are also discussed.
The moments of the fluorescent radiation of a J2{J}^{2}J2-invariant, cooperative fluorescent group of atoms are calculated exactly. Both photon bunching and antibunching can occur in the fluorescent radiation. All finite-order moments have a critical-point behavior at ${\ensuremath{\Omega}}_{c}=J\ensuremath{\gamma}$ in the cooperative limit of $J\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}$. The maximum normalized intensity correlation is 6/5 which shows greatly reduced intensity fluctuations compared to noncooperative resonance fluorescence. Enhanced antibunching in all the fluorescent correlation functions occurs in the threshold region.