Abstract
The problem of an atom interacting simultaneously with the quantized modes of the vacuum electromagnetic field and with a classical time dependent field is investigated utilizing the general theory of damping devised by Heitler. Spectral lineshapes are obtained as a function of the variables of the classical field and are studied in detail for the case of spontaneous emission from coupled levels of dissimilar lifetimes. In the limit that the time dependent coupling vanishes, the resulting spectral line is the same as that derived by Weisskopf and Wigner.

This publication has 7 references indexed in Scilit: