Non-Markovian analysis of coherence in a driven two-level atom

Abstract

Recent femtosecond processes [Phys. Rev. Lett. 66, 2464 (1991)] confirm the importance of non-Markovian effects since the dynamical characteristic times of the system become of the same time scale as the reservoir. We analyze here the memory effects in the density-matrix coherence for a driven two-level atom in the stationary regime. The coherence parameter \ensuremath{\eta} is written in terms of the detuning, the strength of the external driving force, and the temperature as the reservoir. We verify that the memory effects, present in the density matrix, are enhanced by the external driving force. We introduce the Shanon information entropy and we verify that, while in the Markovian approximation the entropy decreases monotonically as function of the detuning, in the non-Markovian approach it is characterized by a minimum, which enables us to differentiate between the two processes.