Mimicking a squeezed-bath interaction: Quantum-reservoir engineering with atoms

The interaction of an atomic two-level system and a squeezed vacuum leads to interesting effects in atomic dynamics, including line narrowing in resonance fluorescence and absorption spectra, and a suppressed (enhanced) decay of the in-phase and out-of-phase components of the atomic polarization. On the experimental side these predictions have so far eluded observation, essentially due to the difficulty of embedding atoms in a 4 pi squeezed vacuum. In this paper we show how to "engineer" a squeezed-bath-type interaction for an effective two-level system. In the simplest example, our two-level atom is represented by the two ground levels of an atom with an angular momentum J=1/2-->J1/2 transition (a four-level system), which is driven by (weak) laser fields and coupled to the vacuum reservoir of radiation modes. Interference between the spontaneous emission channels in optical pumping leads to a squeezed-bath-type coupling and thus to symmetry breaking of decay on the Bloch sphere. With this system it should be possible to observe the effects predicted in the context of squeezed-bath-atom interactions. The laser parameters allow one to choose properties of the squeezed-bath interaction, such as the (effective) photon-number expectation number N and the squeezing phase phi. We present results of a detailed analytical and numeric al study. [S1050-2947(97)04012-2].