Abstract

The system consisting of a two level atom and a single mode field is very-simple. The behavior of the system in exact resonance is interesting. The energy of this two level atom has a rapid cosine oscillation multiplied by a modulating factor. This modulating factor causes the energy of the atom to have periodic decays and revivals.^[1,2] These decays and revivals are different for different ensembles. it is shown that a state vector can only describe an ensemble.^[3,4,5] A real single system can be described by a pair of state vectors^[6,7,8]. In this paper, we shall use this new point of view to treat those decays and revivals.

© 1988 Optical Society of America