Abstract

Considerable interest has been devoted over the past decade to systems in which atoms interact with a modified vacuum, such as that presented by a cavity, where the electromagnetic modes are concentrated around the resonant frequency. For an excited atom located inside such a cavity, the cavity mode is the only one available to the atom for emission. If the atomic transition is in resonance with the cavity, the spontaneous emission rate into the particular cavity mode is enhanced; otherwise, it is inhibited , which respectively result in a broadening and narrowing of the spontaneous emission spectrum. When the atom-cavity coupling is very strong, the spontaneously emitted photon may be repeatedly absorbed and emitted by the atom before it leaves the cavity, and the spectrum correspondingly exhibits a vacuum Rabi splitting.

© 1998 IEEE