Acceleration-induced effects in stimulated light-matter interactions

Understand

The interaction between light and an atom proceeds via three paradigmatic mechanisms: spontaneous emission, stimulated emission, and absorption.

• All three are resonant processes in the sense that they require that the radiation field be resonant with the atomic transition.
• The non-resonant counterparts of these effects, while necessary to maintain locality of the interaction in principle, are usually negligible because their effects tend to average out over multiple cycles of the radiation field.
• This state of affairs does not hold if the atom is accelerated.