 Collisional phase relaxation and Lorentzian linewidth

If phase-randomizing collisions form a Poisson process of mean interval ${\tau }_c$, field correlation survives only when no such collision occurs during the delay. Thus its magnitude decays as $e^{-|\tau |/{\tau }_c}$. The Wiener-Khinchin theorem gives the normalized Lorentzian line shapeIts full width at half maximum is $2/{\tau }_c$ in angular frequency or $1/(\pi {\tau }_c)$ in ordinary frequency. A population lifetime is a different time constant: lifetime-limited amplitude decay at half the population rate introduces the familiar factor of two. The definition of the supplied lifetime must therefore accompany any numerical linewidth.