Influence of radiative damping on the optical-frequency susceptibility (6 pages)

Itsuki Banno

Richard M. Friedberg, Sven R. Hartmann, Jamal T. Manassah

A. F. Molisch, Nikolai N. Bezuglov

Peter W. Milonni, Robert W. Boyd

Motivated by recent discussions concerning the manner in which damping appears in the electric polarizability, we show that (a) there is a dependence of the nonresonant contribution on the damping and that (b) the damping enters according to the ``opposite sign prescription.'' We also discuss the related question of how the damping rates in the polarizability are related to energy-level decay rates.

G. S. Agarwal, Robert W. Boyd

Using first principles, it is demonstrated that radiative damping alone cannot lead to a nonvanishing linear electro-optic effect in a chiral isotropic medium. This conclusion is in contrast with that obtained by a calculation in which damping effects are included using the standard phenomenological model. We show that these predictions differ because the phenomenological damping equations are valid only in regions where the frequencies of the applied electromagnetic fields are nearly resonant with the atomic transitions. We also show that collisional damping can lead to a nonvanishing linear electro-optic effect, but with a strength sufficiently weak, it is unlikely to be observable under realistic laboratory conditions.

Paul S. Julienne