Signatures of non-Markovian relaxation in two-level atoms due to environmental perturbations

Abstract

The effect of environmental perturbations on a system of two-level atoms is to alter the coupling between the atoms and their surroundings, which manifests itself as a change in the relaxation rates of the atoms. One of the ways in which environmental fluctuations can affect an atom is to modulate its transition frequency in a stochastic manner. We study the response of such two-level atoms to irradiation by a monochromatic laser, and report the results of numerical experiments on the spectrum of scattered light. It is observed that this spectrum is a sensitive indicator of the parameters that describe the stochastic modulation. In addition, the spectra exhibit substantially different features depending on whether the stochastic process follows a diffusion or a jump mechanism. The numerical results are based on a Monte Carlo procedure, which can be applied to stochastic processes in a wide variety of biological, chemical, and physical processes.