| Abstract | Recent studies of the failure of the optical Bloch equations (OBE) in describing optical saturation in a solid are extended to test another aspect of the OBE, namely the time dependence of free-induction decay (FID) predicted by the SWB theorem on optical transients [Schenzle, Wong, and Brewer, Phys. Rev. A 22, 635 (1980)]. This theorem states that, following an arbitrarily shaped excitation pulse of length T, the FID will vanish at time T following the end of the excitation pulse. Experiments with ruby violate SWB in that FID decay at least twice as long as the excitation pulse is observed. Numerical and analytical calculations using a Gauss-Markov model for the modified OBE show an extended FID decay, however, the theoretical decay shape does not agree with experiment. Thus as with earlier studies on saturation broadening, we find that the modified OBE provides only a qualitative description of radiation-atom interaction in a solid. |
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