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Spontaneous emission of an atom in front of a mirror

Almut Beige·Jiannis Pachos·Herbert Walther
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Abstract

Motivated by a recent experiment [J. Eschner {\it et al.}, Nature {\bf 413}, 495 (2001)], we now present a theoretical study on the fluorescence of an atom in front of a mirror. On the assumption that the presence of the distant mirror and a lens imposes boundary conditions on the electric field in a plane close to the atom, we derive the intensities of the emitted light as a function of an effective atom-mirror distance. The results obtained are in good agreement with the experimental findings.

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Almut Beige, Jiannis Pachos, Herbert Walther. 2002-09-15. Spontaneous emission of an atom in front of a mirror. https://doi.org/10.1103/physreva.66.063801

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