We study the near-resonant dipole-dipole interaction between two atoms in a broadband squeezed vacuum. We show that this ‘‘vacuum’’ modifies the rate of spontaneous emission of the atoms so that it may depend not merely on their relative position, as is normally the case, but also on their center-of-mass position. The explicit form of this latter dependence is a function of the way squeezing is achieved. We also show that in contrast to the spontaneous decay rate, squeezed vacua do not modify the dipole-dipole potential between the atoms as compared to its usual form. Finally, we develop a Monte Carlo wave-function description of the interaction between atoms with an arbitrary internal structure and a squeezed vacuum and apply this formalism to the case of off-resonant excitation of the atoms. We find that in addition to the usual light shift, the squeezed vacuum results in an additional contribution to the effective potential governing the evolution of the atomic ground states. © 1996 The American Physical Society.

• Received 24 October 1995

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.53.3573