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Journal of Physics B Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics

Thermal-field effects of photon statistics in resonance fluorescence

Saad S. M. Hassan, R. Bullough, G. P. Hildred, Mohamed Ridza Wahiddin

Published Mar 28, 1988• 7 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The photon counting statistics of the fluorescence of a single atom driven by a resonant coherent field has been calculated and the results checked experimentally. The authors examine the effect of detuning the coherent field and/or the effect of an additional thermal field on the photon counting statistics. They work with a master equation that they have used previously and derive exact results for the probability distribution function P(n, tau ) for the emitted photons and for the normalised second factorial moment Q. The subPoissonian character of the photon statistics, for which Q<0, is most pronounced for weak thermal fields or weak detuned coherent fields. For short counting times tau the statistic is dominated by any spontaneous emission that occurs, as expected. Increasing numbers of black-body photons tend to increase the Q values, as might be expected-especially in the case of an initially excited atom-but no simple rule emerges. The recent experiments in the microwave region on Rydberg atoms interacting with thermal radiation in (low-Q) cavities offers the possibility of observing thermal-field effects on the photon counting statistics.

DOI
10.1088/0953-4075/21/6/009

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The photon counting statistics of the fluorescence of a single atom driven by a resonant coherent field has been calculated and the results checked experimentally. The authors examine the effect of detuning the coherent field and/or the effect of an additional thermal field on the photon counting statistics. They work with a master equation that they have used previously and derive exact results for the probability distribution function P(n, tau ) for the emitted photons and for the normalised second factorial moment Q. The subPoissonian character of the photon statistics, for which Q<0, is most pronounced for weak thermal fields or weak detuned coherent fields. For short counting times tau the statistic is dominated by any spontaneous emission that occurs, as expected. Increasing numbers of black-body photons tend to increase the Q values, as might be expected-especially in the case of an initially excited atom-but no simple rule emerges. The recent experiments in the microwave region on Rydberg atoms interacting with thermal radiation in (low-Q) cavities offers the possibility of observing thermal-field effects on the photon counting statistics.
The theory of photon-number statistics in resonance fluorescence is treated, starting with the general formula for the emission probability of nnn photons during a given time interval TTT. The results fully confirm formerly obtained results by Cook that were based on the theory of atomic motion in a traveling wave. General expressions for the factorial moments are derived and explicit results for the mean and the variance are given. It is explicitly shown that the distribution function tends to a Gaussian when TTT becomes much larger than the natural lifetime of the excited atom. The speed of convergence towards the Gaussian is found to be typically slow, that is, the third normalized central moment (or the skewness) is proportional to ${T}^{\ensuremath{-}\frac{1}{2}}$. However, numerical results illustrate that the overall features of the distribution function are already well represented by a Gaussian when TTT is larger than a few natural lifetimes only, at least if the intensity of the exciting field is not too small and its detuning is not too large.
Statistics of fluorescence photons emitted by a single two-level atom interacting with a continuous wave laser field are analyzed. The photon-counting distribution is calculated for the so-called intermediate fluorescence photons, i.e., those counted during the time interval between instants at which photons are emitted. The result is a sub-Poissonian (narrower than Poisson) distribution, which agrees with experimental observations. This intermediate-photon distribution is used to calculate the average number of fluorescence photons, the second factorial moment of the photon-counting distribution, and Mandel’s Q parameter commonly used to evaluate the deviation of photon statistics from the Poisson distribution. The theoretical expressions obtained for moments of the intermediate-photon distribution are different from well-known Mandel’s formulas.
We study the general properties of the photon statistics of fluorescence radiation, emitted by a two-level atom in a strong laser field and a perturber bath. We investigate the deviation of the factorial moments from a Poisson distribution, and we show that for long counting times the lowest-order correction can be expressed entirely by the quantity Q, which represents the deviation of the variance from the average. We introduce and evaluate the quantities gn(t), which serve as a measure for the deviation of the higher-order statistics from Poissonian statistics. Subsequently we obtain explicit expressions for the average waiting time for the appearance of the n th photon, after an arbitrary initialization of the counting process. It turns out that the average time delay is again determined by Q. Hence this parameter can be measured in a photon-counting experiment, which involves only the observation of a single photon, rather than an (in principle) infinite number of photons.
The authors investigate the resonance fluorescence of a single coherently driven atom in the presence of an additional incoherent field. The analysis is based on a master equation describing the driven atom coupled to a reservoir and the incoherent field may be the black-body field associated with the finite temperature of the reservoir. The incoherent field induces asymmetries in the usual three-peaked Stark spectrum and these are compared with asymmetries derived from other models-notably the 'laser diffusion' model, and a more fundamental analysis. The theory is extended to the case of two or more atoms; the additional side bands (dips) in the fluorescence (absorption) spectrum occurring at higher harmonics of the laser Rabi frequency are also affected by the thermal field.
The photon-counting statistics of squeezed states in collective time-dependent resonance fluorescence is calculated for the homodyne detection technique. The secular approximation is applied to obtain analytical expressions for the photon-counting distribution produced by homodyning the fluorescent field and coherent radiation. Squeezing is shown to appear only in the transient regime of resonance fluorescence. The time location of squeezing is independent of the number of atoms, N, but squeezing increases with increasing N. Moreover, squeezing occurs only for a judicious choice of the phase of the local oscillator and occurs over long counting times T. The time interval T is strongly dependent on the initial atomic population. If initially all atoms are in their excited states, squeezing appears with a delay twice as long as that for initially nonexcited atoms.
We consider a single-mode radiation field initially in a displaced squeezed thermal state. The weak interaction of such a field with a heat bath of arbitrary temperature is shown to preserve the Gaussian form of the characteristic function. Accordingly, the study of the time development of the density operator reduces to our previous description [P. Marian and T. A. Marian, preceding paper, Phys. Rev. A 47, 4474 (1993)] of the initial quantum state. As examples, photon statistics and squeezing properties of the damped field are analyzed. Based on the close relation between field dissipation and photon detection, we derive simple analytic formulas for the counting distribution and its factorial moments. Nonclassical features of a displaced squeezed thermal state, such as oscillations of the photon-number distribution, survive in the counting process, provided that the quantum efficiency of the detector is high enough.