Spontaneous-emission suppression via multiphoton quantum interference

Abstract

The spontaneous emission is investigated for an effective atomic two-level system in an intense coherent field with frequency lower than the vacuum-induced decay width. As this additional low-frequency field is assumed to be intense, multiphoton processes may be induced, which can be seen as alternative transition pathways in addition to the simple spontaneous decay. The interplay of the various interfering transition pathways influences the decay dynamics of the two-level system and may be used to slow down the spontaneous decay considerably. We derive from first principles an expression for the Hamiltonian including up to three-photon processes. This Hamiltonian is then applied to a quantum mechanical simulation of the decay dynamics of the two-level system. Finally, we discuss numerical results of this simulation based on a rubidium atom and show that the spontaneous emission in this system may be suppressed substantially.

18 pages, 7 figures, latest version with minor changes

References in corpus (4)

• Universal dynamical control of quantum mechanical decay: Modulation of the coupling to the continuum
• Inhibition of Decoherence due to Decay in a Continuum
• Dark state suppression and narrow fluorescent feature in a laser-driven lambda atom
• Spontaneous emission suppression on arbitrary atomic transitions

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Spontaneous emission interference in negative-refractive-index waveguides
• Quantum dynamics of a two-level emitter with modulated transition frequency
• Spontaneous decay processes in a classical strong low-frequency laser field
• Phase-dependent interference mechanisms in a three-level Lambda system driven by a quantized laser field