Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-atomic-and-laser-physics-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2021/2/d/solution

The first-order excitation amplitude is the Fourier transform of the temporal pulse envelope evaluated at the Rabi detuning. Two rectangular time windows therefore give exactly the mathematical structure of double-slit interference: each window gives a sinc function amplitude, and their separation gives a relative quantum phase . The transition probability is a sinc function squared envelope multiplied by .
Pulse duration corresponds to slit width, pulse-start separation to slit-center separation, and Rabi detuning to the transverse wavevector sampled on the screen. The narrow fringes measure the long separation, while the broad envelope measures the short interaction duration. As in spatial interference, adding probabilities instead of coherent probability amplitudes would lose the fringes. Randomizing the relative pulse phase averages the cosine squared to .

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