01:58 <rjo> you can also get rabi oscillations on a photon field.

01:58 <rjo> in general on any driven (two-level) system.

02:00 <rjo> sb0: you described it correctly. if you measure, you will only ever get 0 or 1. the oscillation is in the probability. and the qm description behind it is a superposition state.

02:17 <sb0> and why is the light treated classically? is it because there are so many photons that you can (and it's easier to) treat it as a continuous wave?

02:21 <sb0> when shooting a single photon onto a single atom you don't get something like that, right? just a random absorption with some fixed probability

02:27 <sb0> well, I guess you could make it a case that as long as you don't measure anything, that atom is in a superposition state and then subsequent photons will interfere with it and produce something like Rabi oscillations

08:29 <clever> from what i can remember, certain wavelenghts have different chances of being absorbed, which depends on the atomic structure of the target

08:29 <clever> and any atomic clock is just sweeping the wavelenght up/down and using a normal closed loop to find the target where it gets the most reaction

08:30 <clever> i'm a bit fuzzy on how it changes that wavelenght though, forgot that element

08:31 <sb0> AOM?

08:31 <sb0> and yes, you need to be tuned to an atomic transition