Intrinsic decoherence in the interaction of two fields with a two-level atom

Abstract

We study the interaction of a two-level atom and two fields, one of them classical. We obtain an effective Hamiltonian for this system by using a method recently introduced that produces a small rotation to the Hamiltonian that allows to neglect some terms in the rotated Hamiltonian. Then we solve a variation of the Schr\"odinger equation that models decoherence as the system evolves through intrinsic mechanisms beyond conventional quantum mechanics rather than dissipative interaction with an environment.