Spontaneous emission of an atom in front of a mirror
arXiv:quant-ph/0206080 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.66.063801
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.
8 pages, 6 figures, revised version, references added