Abstract

Recently the first experimental evidence of dynamic suppression of spontaneous emission in a strongly driven cavity has been obtained for Rydberg atoms placed in a close superconducting microwave cavity.¹ Unlike in the case of an optical resonator² the atoms do not interact with noncavity modes. The only reason for the atomic decay is the interaction of the atoms with the cavity mode decaying due to the finite Q factor of the cavity. The other difference from the optical cavity is the value of atom-cavity field coupling constant g: the high-Q microwave cavity g can be larger than cavity decay rate k. For example, in experiment¹ g = 2π × 17 kHz and k = 2π × 6.7 kHz. This is the direct indication that the usual second order Bom approximation with respect to g is not good enough for the case.

© 1994 IEEE