Eur. Phys. J. D (2013) 67: 167
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2013-30191-x

Regular Article

Bessel beams of two-level atoms driven by a linearly polarized laser field

¹ Physikalisches Institut, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
² Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Postfach 103980, 69029 Heidelberg, Germany
³ GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung, 64291 Darmstadt, Germany
⁴ Helmholtz-Institut Jena, Fröbelstieg 3, 07743 Jena, Germany
⁵ Theoretisch-Physikalisches Institut, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Max-Wien-Platz 1, 07743 Jena, Germany

^a e-mail: armen@physi.uni-heidelberg.de

Received: 20 March 2012
Received in final form: 8 April 2013
Published online: 1 August 2013

Abstract

We study Bessel beams of two-level atoms that are driven by a linearly polarized laser field. Starting from the Schrödinger equation, we determine the states of two-level atoms in a plane-wave field respecting propagation directions both of the atom and the field. For such laser-driven two-level atoms, we construct Bessel beams beyond the typical paraxial approximation. We show that the probability density of these atomic beams obtains a non-trivial, Bessel-squared-type behavior and can be tuned under the special choice of the atom and laser parameters, such as the nuclear charge, atom velocity, laser frequency, and propagation geometry of the atom and laser beams. Moreover, we spatially and temporally characterize the beam of hydrogen and selected (neutral) alkali-metal atoms that carry non-zero orbital angular momentum (OAM). The proposed spatiotemporal Bessel states (i) are able to describe, in principle, twisted states of any two-level system which is driven by the radiation field and (ii) have potential applications in atomic and nuclear processes as well as in quantum communication.