Abstract

The topic of Quantum Cavity Electrodynamics is to describe the coupling between the fluctuations of an atomic system and the vacuum e.m. field, when special boundary conditions are imposed by a "cavity" to the vacuum field. A realistic description of these boundary conditions is hence of crucial importance. For such a purpose, the unavoidable dispersive spectral properties of any material cavity cannot be ignored when dealing with (temporal) fluctuations. For these reasons, we have embarked on an (experimental) analysis of the resonant long-range coupling between atomic excitation and the surface modes of a cavity (most often restricted to a simple wall, i.e. a flat open cavity).

© 2000 IEEE