Long-time behaviour of self-dressing and indirect spectroscopy

R. Passante, T. Petrosky and I. Prigogine

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 1995, vol. 218, issue 3, 437-456

Abstract: A two-level system interacting with the radiation field is considered. The time-dependent self-dressing of its bare ground state is studied. The time evolution of the system is discussed within the theory of subdynamics. Investigation of the long-time behaviour is the main point of this paper. It is shown that the dressing process is characterized by two well-defined time scales. At short times we recover well known results that show how the cloud of virtual quanta around the system is generated. At long times new phenomena appear. We show that a real quanta, resonant with the transition frequency of the atom, is emitted; also, we show that this emission process is connected to the instability of the excited state of the two-level system. Physical features of this emission, such as its probability, its detectability and its irreversible character, are discussed. Generalizing these results to a multi-level system, the possibility of an “indirect spectroscopy” is introduced. This possibility stems from the fact that, in addition to the usual Weisskopf-Wigner “direct” decay from a state to a lower one, an “indirect” process is also possible: a virtual transition can first bring the system to a higher excited level, from which it subsequently decays by a resonant transition.

Date: 1995
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/037843719500147Y
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only. Journal offers the option of making the article available online on Science direct for a fee of $3,000

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:218:y:1995:i:3:p:437-456

DOI: 10.1016/0378-4371(95)00147-Y

Access Statistics for this article

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications is currently edited by K. A. Dawson, J. O. Indekeu, H.E. Stanley and C. Tsallis

More articles in Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().