Resonance fluorescence of a cold atom in a high-finesse resonator

We study the spectra of emission of a system composed by an atom, tightly confined inside a high-finesse resonator, when the atom is driven by a laser and is at steady state of the cooling dynamics induced by laser and cavity fields. In general, the spectrum of resonance fluorescence and the spectrum at the cavity output contain complementary information about the dynamics undergone by the system. In certain parameter regimes, quantum interference effects between the scattering processes induced by cavity and laser fields lead to the selective suppression of features of the resonance fluorescence spectrum, which are otherwise visible in the spectrum of laser-cooled atoms in free space. © 2007 The American Physical Society.