Timeline of Resonance Fluorescence

This is an attempt at establishing a comprehensive Timeline of Resonance Fluorescence.

1930

• Calculation of the Natural Line Width on the Basis of Dirac's Theory of Light (as translated by J. B. Sykes). W. Weisskopf and E. Wigner in Zeitschrift für Physik 63:54 (1930).

1933

• Die Streuung des Lichts an angeregten Atomen. V. Weisskopf in Zeitschrift für Physik 85:451 (1933).

1949

• Quantum Theory of Radiation Damping for Discrete States. W. Heitler and S. T. Ma in Proc. Roy. Ir. Ac. 52:109 (1949).

1969

25 December: Mollow's "Power spectrum of light scattered by two-level systems"

First exact derivation by Benjamin Mollow of what will later be recognized as the correct lineshape of resonance fluorescence, in particular of the Mollow triplet. The derivation relies on a semiclassical model (not quantizing the light field) and Lax's quantum regression theorem. This is one of the most important papers on the topic.

• Power Spectrum of Light Scattered by Two-Level Systems. B. R. Mollow in Phys. Rev. 188:1969 (1969).

1976

• A quantum-mechanical master equation treatment of the dynamical Stark effect. H. J. Carmichael and D. F. Walls in J. Phys. B.: At. Mol. Phys. 9:1199 (1976).
• Theory of resonance fluorescence. H. J. Kimble and L. Mandel in Phys. Rev. A 13:2123 (1976).

Full list:

• 28 January: Carmichael and Walls's quantum theory with prediction of antibunching.
• March: Carmichael and Walls's Letter version of the above.
• 1 June (1976): Kimble and Mandel's theory of resonance fluoorescence.
• Hassan's PhD Thesis (with Bullough as supervisor).

1977

• 1 February (1977): Kimble & Mandel's discovery that dephasing produces asymmetric triplets (in their case from the driving laser of finite bandwidth with a diffusing phase). This is an important paper as the first of a long series studying such asymmetries.

• Hassan & Bullough's first (they call it "more fundamental") approach to mixed coherent+chaotic driving of the 2LS, finding an asymmetric triplet. Details also appear in a discussion appended to Ref.  but their main paper is Ref. .

1983

• Hildred et al.'s mixed driving with a coherent and thermal field.