Understand
We study the scattering of guided light from a multilevel cesium atom with the transitions between the hyperfine levels $6S_{1/2}F=4$ and $6P_{3/2}F'=5$ of the $D_2$ line into the guided modes of a nanofiber.
- We show that the rate of scattering of guided light from the atom in the steady-state regime into the guided modes is asymmetric with respect to the forward and backward directions and depends on the polarization of the probe field.
- The asymmetry between the forward and backward scattering is a result of the complex transition structure of the atom and the existence of a longitudinal component of the guided-mode profile function.
- In the case of a two-level atom, the rates of spontaneous emission (and consequently the rates of scattering) into the forward and backward guided modes differ from each other when the atomic dipole matrix-element vector is a complex vector in the plane that contains the fiber axis and the atomic position.