Vacuum-Field Dressed-State Pumping

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Abstract
The steady-state behavior of two-level atoms, driven by a strong field and relaxing into a frequency-dependent vacuum reservoir, has been studied in an experiment involving Ba atoms in a confocal cavity. Enhancement or suppression of the atomic excitation is observed when the cavity is tuned to either of the strong-field fluorescence sidebands. These effects result from a redistribution of the population among the dressed atom-field states induced by the cavity-modified vacuum field. The enhancement effect may be useful in achieving significant steady-state inversion.