DETERMINATION OF ATOM-FIELD OBSERVABLES VIA RESONANT INTERACTION

We find the observables that-can be determined by two practical scheme s based on atom-field resonant interaction. In the first example, the interaction is followed by photon-number and atomic-population measure ments. In the second scheme the directly measured quantity is the atom ic deflection. In particular, we show that they provide the measuremen t of the atom-field relative phase. When the initial field state is kn own, the atomic density matrix can be reconstructed.