Spontaneous emission of an ensemble of 57 Fe nuclei interacting with a coherent radiation field coupling the Zeeman sublevels of a nuclear excited 3/2 state

Abstract

The concept “dressed nucleus” is introduced to describe the interaction of a nucleus (in a static magnetic field) with a coherent radiation field at resonance with the Zeeman sublevels. The idea is to consider the global system as a one quantum system in the Schrodinger representation. It is shown that it is possible to associate to each nuclear Zeeman substate an infinite number of equidistant energy levels, each of them having a four-fold degeneracy when any interaction with the coherent field is neglected. This periodic energy scheme, which is the same for any nuclear Zeeman substate, is a consequence of the resonance condition and of the specific form of the coherent state of the radiation field. When the interaction is included the energy degeneracy is lifted and each level splits into (2I+1)2 equidistant levels, where I is the spin of the free nuclear state. The energy difference between two adjacent levels is proportional to the square root of the mean photon number in the coherent state. When the global system decays spontaneously to a possible ground state a \gamma-photon is produced. Taking into account the selection rules 24 different \gamma-energies are possible for a nuclear M1 3/2→1/2 transition.