Measurement-induced spatial modulation of spontaneous decay and photon arrival times

Abstract

We report a way of manipulating the spontaneous emission process leading to a spatial modulation of spontaneous decay. The effect is observed in the case of coherently driven atoms separated by less than a transition wavelength. It is quantified by Glauber's photon-photon second-order correlation function. We show that the photon arrival time, usually regarded as an entirely random process, depends not only on where a photon is detected but also on where a former photon had been recorded previously. Our results shed light on the unexpected consequences of state reduction and entanglement for the fundamental process of spontaneous emission.