Dressed atom state collision

To describe the shifts and intensities of the m-photon assisted collisional resonances with the microwave field Pillet et al. developed a picture based on dressed molecular states,3 and we follow that development here. As in the previous chapter, we break the Hamiltonian into an unperturbed Hamiltonian H(h and a perturbation V. The difference from our previous treatment of resonant collisions is that now H0 describes the isolated, noninteracting, atoms in both static and microwave fields. Each of the two atoms is described by a dressed atomic state, and we construct the dressed molecular state as a direct product of the two atomic states. The dipole-dipole interaction Vis still given by Eq. (14.12), and using it we can calculate the transition probabilities and cross sections for the radiatively assisted collisions. 

Moerdijk AJ, Verhaar BJ, Nagtegaal TM. (1996) Collisions of dressed ground-state atoms. Phys. Rev. A 53 4343-4351. 

Consider a molecule prepared in the absolute ground state in the absence of the field and subjected to microwave field of frequency . If collided with a structureless atom in the absence of the field and at collision energies below the first excitation threshold, the molecule can undergo only elastic scattering. In the presence of the field, the ground state of the molecule becomes a field-dressed state X). And for every field-dressed state X), there is an infinite number of replica states 2 - A ), lower in energy. The states 2 - A ) and X) are coupled by the anisotropy of the atom-molecule interaction potential, so collisions can induce... 

Figure 3. Dressed state basis for atomic collisions. A - The square of the transfer matrix between the excitation Fock state and the dressed state bases for N = M = 100. Darker areas correspond to larger probability. B - Damping spectrum between the N = M = 5000 manifold and the N = 4999, M = 5000 manifold. Dashed line k = 3.2, dotted line k = 1.6 and solid line k = 0.7, q = k/ /2. Inset energy-conserving surfaces for the two center frequencies of the solid line and for elastic damping from mode k (dashed line). The splitting in the spectrum is due to the nonlinear population oscillations due to three-wave mixing of the modes in the time domain. This behavior is analogous to that of a strongly driven two level atom (Mollow splitting).

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