Coherent excitation of an autoionising state

From the two previous sections, it is clear that the dynamics of exciting an autoionising resonance, which has a mixture of bound state and continuum character, will be rather complex, involving both reversible and irreversible contributions, i.e. a combination of Rabi oscillations and damping. 

In fact, if we think of oscillations as involving a factor exp(iClt), then if the Rabi frequency is taken as complex, its real part will be the bound state contribution, and the imaginary part can be used to represent loss of population into the continuum. 

An interesting example is the case of LICS, which was discussed in section 8.20. In this case, one can show that the complex Rabi frequency 

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