Quantum collapses and revivals in an optical cavity

Abstract

We study the influence of the atomic spontaneous-emission decay on the collapse-revival phenomena in the optical region. We demonstrate that revivals of the atomic inversion are much more sensitive to cavity-field damping than to spontaneous emission. This suggests that the additional dissipation caused by spontaneous emission would not offer an insurmountable obstacle to the experimental observation of optical revivals in high-Q cavities.