Abstract
The study of collective atomic behavior is an important problem that has attracted much interest in recent years. Theoretical work has shown that single-atom radiative processes can be altered by atomic dipole-dipole coupling,1,2 The experimental difficulties associated with these proposals are that the intra-atomic spacing must be much smaller than an optical wavelength for observation of substantial effects,-whereas the number of atoms must be kept small so that the collective behavior is not masked by single-atom effects. An alternative approach is to couple the atoms through a mode of the electromagnetic field. Motivated by recent advances in ion trapping technology3 and by a calculation of interference in the fluorescence from two atoms,4 we have investigated the effects of collective behavior on the interference- fringe visibility. In Ref. 4 it was shown that for two atoms driven by a resonant laser, the fringe visibility should be near unity in a weak field and will asymptotically approach zero as the field is increased. This drop in visibility in a strong field is due to the loss of coherence between the fluorescence of the two atoms. Our main result is that in the presence of a resonant cavity, the coherence can be partially recovered and that a corresponding increase in visibility will be observed. Large enhancements of visibility are found for cavity parameters that seem experimentally realizable.
© 1993 Optical Society of America
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