Radiative emission due to atomic self-dressing in QED

We study the radiative emission due to the self-dressing of a two-level atom, initially in its bare ground state, interacting with the zero-point electromagnetic field. Evolution in time leads to the formation of a dressed ground state of lower energy. This energy difference between bare and dressed ground state is taken into account by the emission of real photons. In order to describe this aspect of the self-dressing process we study the transition probability amplitude from the initial bare state to an asymptotic state consisting of the atom in its dressed ground state plus some real photons. Adopting nonperturbative techniques based on the resolvent method we find that the bare-dressed transition occurs at the lowest order with the emission of two photons. The spectral distribution obtained shows that there is a probability for emission of photons at frequency of the order of the atom's transition frequency