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Abstract

The Mollow spectrum for the light scattered by a driven two-level atom is derived in the resolvent operator formalism. The derivation is based on the construction of a master equation from the resolvent operator of the atom-field system. We show that the natural linewidth of the excited atomic level remains essentially unmodified, to a very good level of approximation, even in the strong-field regime, where Rabi flopping becomes relevant inside the self-energy loop that yields the linewidth. This ensures that the obtained master equation and the spectrum derived matches that of Mollow.