Abstract
We present a formal quantum-mechanical treatment of the damping and fluctuations of a generic radiator atom due to collisions with foreign gas atoms. By working in the Heisenberg picture, the fluctuating noise sources are identified with the damping. Under the same approximations as the conventional line-shape broadening theory in the impact (Markov) approximation, the fluctuation-dissipation theorem is satisfied in the form of the conservation of an equal-time commutator for the atomic operators. The implications of this type of approach for the quantum theory of light propagation in an active medium is addressed. Simple cases for two-level and three-level \ensuremath{\Lambda}-type systems are given explicitly.
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