Cavity-induced coherence effects in spontaneous emissions from preselection of polarization

Spontaneous emission can create coherences in a multilevel atom having close-lying levels, subject to the condition that the atomic dipole matrix elements are nonorthogonal. This condition is rarely met in atomic systems. We report the possibility of bypassing this condition and thereby creating coherences by letting the atom with orthogonal dipoles interact with the vacuum of a preselected polarized cavity mode rather than the free-space vacuum. We derive a master equation for the reduced density operator of a model four-level atomic system, and obtain its analytical solution to describe the interference effects. We report the quantum beat structure in the populations. [S1050-2947(99)07203-0].