Field shift of the center of the Lamb gap taking into account the recoil effect

E. V. Baklanov

C.G. Aminoff, Stig Stenholm

Michael Fleischhauer

Local field effects on the rate of spontaneous emission and Lamb shift in a dense gas of atoms are discussed taking into account correlations of atomic center-of-mass coordinates. For this the exact retarded propagator in the medium is calculated in independent scattering approximation and employing a virtual-cavity model. The resulting changes of the atomic polarizability lead to modifications of the medium response which can be of the same order of magnitude but of opposite sign than those due to local field corrections of the dielectric function derived by Morice, Castin, and Dalibard [Phys.Rev.A 51, 3896 (1995)].

Sascha Wallentowitz, P. E. Toschek

The recoil effects of spontaneous photon emissions during optical pumping of a trapped three-level atom are exactly calculated. Without resort to the Lamb-Dicke approximation, and considering arbitrary detuning and saturation of the pump laser, the density of recoil shifts in phase space is derived. It is shown that this density is not of Gaussian shape, and that it becomes isotropic in phase space only for a branching ratio corresponding to fluorescence scattering but unfavorable for optical pumping. The dependence of its anisotropy on the laser saturation is discussed in the resonant case, and the mapping of moments of the atom's center-of-mass motion due to the pumping is presented. Moreover, it is shown how optimum parameters for protecting the center-of-mass quantum state from pump-induced disturbance depend on the specific property to be protected.

A. P. Kazantsev

Shuai Yang, Hang Zheng, R. Hong +2 more