Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-atomic-and-optical-physics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2013/paper-1/1/ii/solution

For the harmonic-oscillator recoil matrix element, using and differentiating the Gaussian transform with respect to ,
Consequently . Reversing the travelling-wave phase changes the sign of the imaginary amplitude. For small , the sideband is weaker by in amplitude and in probability.
With the printed unnormalized Gaussians, the literal integral would be . It is distinguished from the physical normalized-oscillator result rather than silently treating inconsistent wavefunctions as normalized.

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