Effects of atomic motion in a standing-wave laser field on the Rabi oscillations

We study the effects of the two-level-atom motion in a standing-wave laser field on the Rabi oscillations. In the presence of the resonance optical Stern–Gerlach effect, the atomic wave packet, centered initially at a node of the standing wave, is shown to evolve in such a way that the atomic popula...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of Russian laser research Vol. 30; no. 4; pp. 404 - 410
Main Authors Konkov, Leonid E., Prants, Sergey V.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Boston Springer US 01.07.2009
Subjects
Approximation
Coherence
Doppler effect
Lasers
Mathematical analysis
Microwaves
Optical Devices
Optics
Oscillations
Photonics
Physics
Physics and Astronomy
Population inversion
RF and Optical Engineering
Wave packets
coherent population trapping
cold atoms
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Summary:We study the effects of the two-level-atom motion in a standing-wave laser field on the Rabi oscillations. In the presence of the resonance optical Stern–Gerlach effect, the atomic wave packet, centered initially at a node of the standing wave, is shown to evolve in such a way that the atomic population inversion remains zero when the initially de-excited atom moves between the nodes, then collapses to the ground level upon crossing the nodes, and practically returns to zero after that. This coherent population trapping is explained in the dressed-state picture. The Doppler–Rabi resonance, i.e., maximum Rabi oscillations at large values of the atom–field detuning, becomes possible if the detuning is equal to the Doppler shift. A simple formula for the population inversion is derived in the Raman–Nath approximation.
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ISSN:1071-2836
1573-8760
DOI:10.1007/s10946-009-9080-3