Effects of Vacuum Fluctuation Suppression on Atomic Decay Rates

Understand

The use of atomic decay rates as a probe of sub-vacuum phenomena will be studied.

• Because electromagnetic vacuum fluctuations are essential for radiative decay of excited atomic states, decay rates can serve as a measure of the suppression of vacuum fluctuation in non-classical states, such as squeezed vacuum states.
• In such states the renormalized expectation value of the square of the electric field or the energy density can be periodically negative, representing suppression of vacuum fluctuations.
• We explore the extent to which atomic decays can be used to measure the mean squared electric field or energy density.