A single trapped atom in front of an oscillating mirror

We investigate the Wigner-Weisskopf decay of a two-level atom in front of an oscillating mirror. This work builds on and extends previous theoretical and experimental studies of the effects of a static mirror on spontaneous decay and resonance fluorescence. The spontaneously emitted field is inherently non-stationary due to the time-dependent boundary conditions and in order to study its spectral distribution we employ the operational definition of the spectrum of non-stationary light due to the seminal work by Eberly and Wodkiewicz. We find a rich dependence of this spectrum as well as of the effective decay rates and level shifts on the mirror-atom distance and on the amplitude and frequency of the mirror's oscillations. The results presented here provide the basis for future studies of more complex setups, where the motion of the atom and/or the mirror are included as quantum degrees of freedom. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.