Coherence and elastic scattering in resonance fluorescence

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Abstract
Some coherence properties of the light emitted from a two-level atom which is excited by a monochromatic coherent field are investigated. It is shown that the elastically scattered light is coherent, and that this compoment of the emitted field can be separated from the total field by narrow-band filtering at the driving frequency. These results are then applied to the problem of interference between the fluorescent and the elastically scattered field. An interference experiment is analyzed in which the detection of one emitted photon signifies the beginning of a Rabi cycle and the detection of a subsequent photon fixes the instant in the Rabi cycle when the interference is detected. It is shown that the visibility of the interference is near zero at the time when the fluorescence is maximum.