This award will support collaborative research between Dr. Paul Berman, Department of Physics, New York University and two groups of French scientists at the Laboratoire Aime Cotton, Orsay and the Laboratoire de Spectroscopie Hertzienne del'Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris. The objective of this research is to further our understanding of the interaction of radiation with matter. In this joint project, both theoretical and experimental studies will be undertaken to examine the response of an ensemble of atoms to two or more radiation fields. Research will focus on the sensitivity of the atomic response to the coherence properties of the applied fields and to collisional processes occurring in the atomic vapor. Specific goals of the research program are: (1) a experimental and theoretical study of the interaction of intense stochastic fields with atoms; (2) a unified approach to explain various collision-induced resonant structures that appear in nonlinear spectroscopic line shapes; (3) a theoretical and experimental study of new situations in which collision-induced resonances are observed; and (4) a fully-quantized theory of multiple-wave interactions of radiation with matter. This work will bring together three institutions with significant expertise in the theoretical and experimental studies of atomic and optical physics.
