Abstract

We investigate the atomic inversion dynamics that occur when an atom interacts with a two-mode quantized radiation field. Our work uses Schrodinger theory with the rotating wave approximation. We adiabatically eliminate all but two of the atomic states in order to obtain analytical and numerical results. By varying the width and average photon number of the field statistics, we have uncovered secondary revivals that arise because of the complicated double sum over the two field modes in the population inversion. The diagonal part of the sum (the part that contains commensurate frequencies) is closely related to the degenerate-mode work of Buck and Sukumar.¹ The breaking of the exact periodicity with secondary revivals and eventual erratic behavior result from the off-diagonal terms. Use of Poisson statistics allows exact analytic results to be obtained and also allows comparisons with previous work to be made. However, because the width and mean are intimately related for Poisson statistics, we also use Gaussian statistics so that their effects may be separated. To investigate various possible initial field conditions, we use squeezed states (oscillatory in photon number), displaced number states, and generalized states. The latter interpolate between number states, coherent states, and thermal states.

© 1990 Optical Society of America