Abstract
In cavity quantum electrodynamics (CQED), cavity size, dipole position and dipole orientation are the main factors controlling cavity effects, for example, suppression and enhancement of spontaneous emission. However, the dynamical effects of dipole orientation in CQED have, to date, remained largely unexplored, with most treatments simply concentrating on two (or three) orthogonal directions to illustrate the variations of CQED effects with dipole orientation. No mechanism which determines the evolution of the dipole orientation has been put forward to describe typical situations where atoms move in the field of an excited cavity mode. We emphasize here that in the presence of a cavity mode, the average dipole orientation is automatically determined at every point to be parallel to the direction of the electric field vector of the cavity mode. Besides giving rise to a single value for the spontaneous emission rate, this mechanism is shown to have important consequences for the dynamics of atoms in atom guides. In particular, it determines the average trapping potential distributions and the average radiation forces which guide the atoms along a cylindrical cavity. The effects of the field-dipole orientation mechanism are illustrated with reference to typical situations involving sodium atoms in sub-micron cylindrical guides. The role of a higher order cavity mode of the cylinder in the dynamics is highlighted in terms of its influence on the rotational and vibrational motions in such guides.