Inhibition of Atomic Phase Decays by Squeezed Light: A Direct Effect of Squeezing

By reduction of the electromagnetic field fluctations in one quadrature phase, squeezed light can inhibit the phase decay of an atom. This gives three relaxation times: the usual longitudinal relaxation time and two different transverse relaxation times, which are inversely proportional to the variances of the two quadrature phases of the incident light. With sufficient reduction of one variance, the corresponding relaxation time can be made arbitrarily long. The two transverse decay times are observable in the spectrum of the fluorescent light, thus providing measure of the squeezing in the incident light.