Abstract
We investigate the two-photon decay rate of a highly excited atomic state which can decay to bound states of lower energy via cascade processes. We show that a naïve treatment of the process, based on the introduction of phenomenological decay rates for the intermediate, resonant states, leads to lower-order terms which need to be subtracted in order to obtain the coherent two-photon correction to the decay rate. The sum of the lower-order terms is exactly equal to the one-photon decay rate of the initial state, provided the naïve two-photon decay rates are summed over all available two-photon channels. A quantum electrodynamics treatment of the problem leads to an “automatic” subtraction of the lower-order terms.
- Received 15 September 2008
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.79.022510
©2009 American Physical Society