Atomic Excitation by a Jump-Noisy Laser

Abstract

Recent experimental interest[1,2] in the effects of laser bandwidth on atomic absorption and emission suggests the need for a wider range of theoretical models capable of describing noisy quasi-monochromatic lasers. Of the results already known[3], almost all are derived from theories based on lasers whose bandwidth arises from a white-noise process. We shall describe a number of results obtained from studies of laser-induced atomic excitation when the laser noise arises from jump noise or generalized random telegraph noise[4]. We shall report on the response of a simple two-level transition to laser excitation in the case that the laser has phase, frequency, and amplitude noise, and several combinations of such noise processes. As one example, we show in the figure below the atom’s emission spectrum as a function of the size of the phase jump and the mean interval between jumps, when the random phase is a pure telegraph, i.e., has only two possible states.