Abstract

We study a single two-level atom interacting on resonance with a weakly driven optical cavity mode. In earlier work on this system we calculated the degree of second-order coherence, the optical spectrum, and the spectrum of squeezing for both the transmitted light and fluorescence out the sides of the cavity.¹,² We present results for the cross-correlation functions that determine joint probabilities for a photodetection in transmission (fluorescence) followed by a photodetection in fluorescence (transmission). We compute these correlation functions numerically for arbitrary values of the three rates that govern the system dynamics: the atomic decay rate γ to modes other than the cavity mode, the photon escape rate from the cavity 2K, and the atom-field coupling constant g. Analytical results provide insight for the following limits of the parameters: (1) the bad-cavity limit, $\kappa /{\gamma }^{\to \infty },\kappa /g^{\to \infty },g^2/\kappa \gamma$ constant; (2) the atomic-loss limit, $\kappa /{\gamma }^{\to 0},\kappa /g^{\to 0},\gamma /g$ constant; (3) the cavity-loss limit, $\gamma /{\kappa }^{\to 0},\gamma /g^{\to 0},g/\kappa$ constant; and (4) the good-cavity limit, $k/{\gamma }^{\to 0},k/g\to 0,g^2/\kappa \gamma$ constant. In the bad-cavity limit the cross-correlation functions are symmetric with respect to the order of detection in transmission and fluorescence; in general they are not symmetric.

© 1988 Optical Society of America