Radiative corrections in laser-dressed atoms: formalism and applications. (Q1426403)

The article is devoted to the problem of theoretical study of the so-called ``dressed Lamb shift''' in atomic systems., i. e. of the interaction of an atom with the vacuum modes in an external laser field. The dressing of atomic states arises from the interaction of the atom with the laser field. In the paper, the radiative corrections received by the dressed states are investigated. In more detail, the interaction of the atom with the laser field determines the Rabi flopping frequency of the atomic populations and dictates the use of dressed atom-laser states for the description of the strongly coupled atom-laser system. The quantum fluctuations of the electric dipole moment of the atom give rise to the incoherently scattered part of the atomic fluorescence spectrum which is generated by multiphoton scattering processes. The interaction of the combined atom-laser system with the vacuum modes shifts the dressed-state energy levels by an amount which is called ``dressed Lamb shift''. The dressed states which represent a nonperturbative solution for the atom-laser interaction in the limit of strong driving laser field are the zeroth-order solution which the study of radiative corrections in a strong laser field is based on. It was found in the paper that the dressed radiative corrections differ in a nontrivial manner from the radiative shifts of the ``bare'' atomic states.