Acceleration-induced effects in stimulated light-matter interactions

TL;DR

This paper explores how acceleration affects light-matter interactions, revealing that non-resonant effects can dominate and be enhanced by stimulation, with acceleration potentially suppressing resonant processes, linking to the Unruh effect.

Contribution

It demonstrates that acceleration can invert the dominance of resonant and non-resonant light-matter interactions, highlighting the role of stimulation in enhancing non-resonant effects.

Findings

Non-resonant effects can dominate under acceleration.

Stimulation can vastly enhance non-resonant effects.

Acceleration can suppress resonant interactions.

Abstract

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. We show that, when accelerated, the non-resonant effects can be made to dominate over the conventional resonant effects. In fact we show that the non-resonant effects can be vastly enhanced by stimulation, and that suitably chosen acceleration can entirely suppress the resonant effects. In the class of effects that we study, the Unruh effect is the special case of vanishing stimulation.