Abstract

Gardiner¹ treated the problem, of the decay of two-level systems in a squeezed vacuum. To a good approximation, he found that the Maxwell-Bloch equations are modified simply by having different in-phase and in-quadrature relaxation rates. Carmichael, Lane, and Walls² used this model to treat resonance fluorescence in a squeezed vacuum and found sharp resonances with widths characterized by the smaller relaxation constant. Ritsch and Zoller² treated the problem of probe absorption in. a medium saturated by a pump wave and bathed in such a vacuum. In the present work we derive the probe absorption coefficient using standard Fourier series methods⁴ but with two transverse decay constants. This approach has the advantage over that of Ref. 3 in that it is easily generalized to the case of semiclassical⁵ and quantized⁶ four-wave mixing. Furthermore it is a special case of the solvable two-wave problem for which each wave can be arbitrarily intense. We have found some discrepancies with Ref. 3 as well as a significant amount of new physical insight.

© 1988 Optical Society of America