Eur. Phys. J. D (2013) 67: 92
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2013-30729-x

Regular Article

Dynamical polarizability of atoms in arbitrary light fields: general theory and application to cesium^*

¹ Vienna Center for Quantum Science and Technology, Institute of Atomic and Subatomic Physics, Vienna University of Technology, Stadionallee 2, 1020 Vienna, Austria
² Institute of Physics, Vietnamese Academy of Science and Technology, Hanoi, Vietnam

^a e-mail: arno.rauschenbeutel@ati.ac.at

Received: 5 December 2012
Received in final form: 31 January 2013
Published online: 7 May 2013

Abstract

We present a systematic derivation of the dynamical polarizability and the ac Stark shift of the ground and excited states of atoms interacting with a far-off-resonance light field of arbitrary polarization. We calculate the scalar, vector, and tensor polarizabilities of atomic cesium using resonance wavelengths and reduced matrix elements for a large number of transitions. We analyze the properties of the fictitious magnetic field produced by the vector polarizability in conjunction with the ellipticity of the polarization of the light field.