Collapse and revival of the Doppler-Rabi oscillations of a moving atom in a cavity

Collapse and revival of the Doppler-Rabi oscillations of a two-level atom moving in a cavity electromagnetic field are analyzed. The coupled atom-field dynamics are predicted accurately by numerical calculation and approximately by using the stationary phase approximation combined with the Poisson summation formula. The collapse and revival patterns are shown to be qualitatively different in the cases of moving atom and atom at rest. In particular, quantum revivals of Doppler-Rabi oscillations occur with a period determined by the Doppler shift of the atomic transition frequency. This regime of Doppler-Rabi oscillations requires that the Rabi frequency and the Doppler shift satisfy the condition Ω_R ? Ω_D. Under the inverse relation, the collapse- revival phenomenon generally does not occur. It is shown that even a small amount of atom-cavity detuning eliminates collapse-revival behavior. The analysis is performed for both coherent and thermal cavity fields.