Laser pulses as measurements: application to the quantum Zeno effect

Short pulses of a probe laser have been used in the past to measure whether a two-level atom is in its ground or excited state. The probe pulse couples the ground state to a third, auxiliary, level of the atom. Occurrence or absence of resonance fluorescence were taken to mean that the atom was found in its ground or excited state, respectively. In this paper we investigate to what extent this procedure results in an effective measurement to which the projection postulate can be applied, at least approximately. We discuss in detail the complications arising from an additional time development of the two-level system proper during a probe pulse. We extend our previous results for weak probe pulses to the general case and show that one can model an ideal (projection-postulate) measurement much better with a strong than a weak probe pulse. In an application to the quantum Zeno effect we calculate the slow-down of the atomic time development under n repeated probe pulse measurements and determine the corrections compared to the case of n ideal measurements. PACS numbers 42.50.-p; 32.80.-t; 03.65.Bz 1.