SPONTANEOUS EMISSION IN A STANDING-WAVE CAVITY - CLASSICAL CENTER-OF-MASS MOTION

We present a nonperturbative result for the spectrum of spontaneous photons emitted by an atom coupled on resonance to a standing-wave cavity mode. Motion of the atom through the standing-wave mode function is included in a classical way. We discuss the form of the spectrum as a function of the velocity of the atom in the limit of strong dipole coupling. For slow atoms the normal-mode doublet ("vacuum" Rabi spectrum) survives with small changes. The motion of a fast atom through the standing wave averages the coupling constant to zero, and the spectrum reverts to a single peak. At intermediate velocities the spectrum has a complicated multipeaked structure that can be understood in terms. of interfering probability amplitudes for different quantum-mechanical emission paths or as a frequency-modulation spectrum for radiating coupled oscillators.