A two-level atom and the problem of the radiation reaction in the semiclassical theory: optical Bloch equations revisited

Abstract

A famous model of a two-level atom interacting with the classical electromagnetic field is used to illustrate the fundamental problem of the relationship between the dynamical and relaxation processes under the interaction of radiation with a quantum-mechanical system and, as a result, to derive nonlinear Bloch-like equations. The presented considerations are based on the analysis of the balance of the fluxes of energy between atomic and field subsystems. It is shown that the generally accepted model of the exponential relaxation deduced for an isolated excited atom and inserted customarily into optical Bloch equations (OBE) describing atom in an external field always leads to a very strange result: spontaneous emission of an atom should be accompanied by the radiation of the coherent field into the external field's mode. Making use of only the energetic considerations, we found the relaxation mechanism (in the form of additional terms in the OBE) which, on the one hand, guarantees the fulfillment of the energetic balance and, on the other hand, allows to introduce arbitrary additional collision-like relaxation mechanism without violation of this balance. Note that these additional terms introduced into OBE from the energetic considerations in a remarkable manner exactly correspond to the renormalization of the external field with the allowance of the classical radiation damping (RD) effect. The revisited OBE may be used as the starting point for considering the dynamics of an atom by making allowance for the quantum properties of an external field.