An alternative electric-field spectrum for laser-driven atomic systems

We adopt an open systems perspective to calculate the power spectrum associated with the electric field generated by an atomic dipole moment undergoing resonant laser-driving. This spectrum has a similar triplet shape to the Mollow spectrum and contains a similar amount of information. This is surprising, since the Mollow triplet derives from the Glauber two-time correlation function, which represents the average energy-intensity of a superposition of waves taken at different times. In contrast, our spectrum derives from a correlation function defined in terms of single-time expectation values of the electric source-field. Although they are derived from very different correlation functions, both spectra reflect the quantum-mechanical level-structure of the atomic source.