Foundations of Laser Spectroscopy

Errata 1. The Components of Theoretical Spectroscopy 1.1. Introduction 1.2. Classical Description of Radiation Fields 1.3. The Quantum Description of Matter 1.4. The Density Matrix 1.5. Physical Properties of the Density Matrix 1.6. Relaxation Terms in the Density Matrix Equation of Motion 1.7. Coherence and Dephasing 1.8. Adiabatic Elimination Procedures 1.9. Effects of Atomic Motion 1.10. Time-Dependent and Steady State Spectroscopy 1.11. Comments and References 2. Physical Effects of Strong Fields on Matter 2.1. The Basic Concepts of Light-Induced Effects on Atomic Matter 2.2. Stationary Two-Level Atoms in a Standing Wave 2.3. Strong Field Effects in Radio-Frequency Spectroscopy 2.4. Moving Atoms in a Traveling Wave 2.5. Moving Atoms in a Standing Wave 2.6. Correction Terms for Moving Atoms 2.7. Strong Signal Theory for Moving Atoms 2.8. Comments and References 3. Foundation of Laser Theory 3.1. General Conditions for Laser Operation 3.2. The Traveling Wave Amplifier 3.3. The Traveling Wave Laser 3.4. More General Laser Theory 3.5. The Standing Wave Laser 3.6. A Laser with a Saturable Absorber 3.7. Comments and References 4. Topics in Laser Spectroscopy 4.1. Introduction 4.2. Saturation Spectroscopy 4.2.a. General Ideas 4.2.b. The Theoretical Description 4.2.c. Comments and References 4.3. The Three-Level System 4.3.a. General Remarks 4.3.b. The Theoretical Description 4.3.c. Doppler-Free Two-Photon Spectroscopy 4.3.d. The Two-Photon Transition Near Resonance 4.3.e. Saturation Effects on the Probe 4.3.f. Comments and References 4.4 Coherence Phenomena and Level-Crossing Signals 4.4.a. Background 4.4.b. General Considerations 4.4.c. The Perturbation Calculation 4.4.d. Some Cases of Physical Interest 4.4.e. Level Crossing in a Lower Level 4.4.f. Comments and References 4.5. Multiphoton Processes 4.5.a. Background Information 4.5.b. The Steady State Situation 4.5.c. The Effective Two-Level System 4.5.d. The Harmonic Oscillator 4.5.e. Comments and References 5. Effects of Field Fluctuations on Spectroscopy 5.1. Stochastic Behavior of Physical Parameters 5.2. Theory of Phase Noise 5.2.a. Phase Noise in Linear Spectroscopy 5.2.b. Phase Noise in the Two-Level System 5.3. Amplitude Fluctuations in a Single-Mode Laser 5.3.a. The Two-Level System 5.3.b. The Three-Level System with a Probe 5.4. The Free-Running Multimode Laser 5.4.a. Statistics of Multimode Light 5.4.b. The Two-Level System 5.5. Comments and References 6. Elements of Electromagnetic Field Quantization 6.1. Introduction 6.2. Decomposition of the Classical Fields 6.3. Quantization of the Field 6.4. Some Perturbation Calculations 6.5. Spontaneous Decay Terms for the Density Matrix 6.6. Resonance Fluorescence in a Strong Field 6.7. Comments and References References Index