Abstract

When the displacement and squeeze parameters for a squeezed coherent state are chosen appropriately, the squeezed state has an oscillatory photon number distribution P(n). Schleich and Wheeler¹ have shown that the oscillations arise from the interference between contributions to P(n) from two regions in phase space where an elongated error ellipse, characterizing the squeezed coherent state, overlaps the annuli characterizing the number states. We study the Jaynes-Cummings model for the interaction of a two-level atom with a single mode of the radiation field when the radiation field is initially in such a squeezed coherent state. Revivals of the atomic inversion occur which have a quite different appearance from those produced when the radiation field is initially In a coherent state.² Each revival is followed by a series of echoes—a phenomenon we call ringing revivals. We discuss the relationship between these echoes and the oscillations in P(n). There is a one-to-one correspondence between echoes and the peaks in P(n); however, interference between the contributions to the inversion from different peaks in P(n) plays an important role in forming the ringing structure of the revivals.

© 1988 Optical Society of America