INTERFERENCE BETWEEN THE RESONANCE FLUORESCENCE FIELDS FROM 2 INDEPENDENT ATOMS AND SPATIAL 2-PHOTON CORRELATIONS

Interference effects in the superposition of the resonance fluorescence radiation from two uncoupled two-level atoms driven by a coherent laser field on resonance are investigated. As a result of the Rabi oscillations that the atoms undergo in a strong driving laser field, first-order interference effects come and go. The joint probability O12 of detecting two photons simultaneously at two different positions in the interference plane may show stronger modulation with detector separation than predicted by a classical wave theory. In particular P12 is found to vanish all the time when the distance between the two detectors is an odd number of half fringe spacing. Under stationary conditions and if the driving field is strong enough to saturate the atomic transitions first-order interference effects vanish, whereas the visibility v of the P12-pattern is still 1. Compared with this a classical wave theory predicts under this circumstances a possible maximum value of nu = 1/2.