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Vacuum Rabi oscillation

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A vacuum Rabi oscillation is a damped oscillation of an initially excited atom coupled to an electromagnetic resonator or cavity in which the atom alternately emits photon(s) into a single-mode electromagnetic cavity and reabsorbs them. The atom interacts with a single-mode field confined to a limited volume V in an optical cavity.[1][2][3] Spontaneous emission is a consequence of coupling between the atom and the vacuum fluctuations of the cavity field.

Mathematical treatment

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A mathematical description of vacuum Rabi oscillation begins with the Jaynes–Cummings model, which describes the interaction between a single mode of a quantized field and a two level system inside an optical cavity. The Hamiltonian for this model in the rotating wave approximation is

where is the Pauli z spin operator for the two eigenstates and of the isolated two level system separated in energy by ; and are the raising and lowering operators of the two level system; and are the creation and annihilation operators for photons of energy in the cavity mode; and

is the strength of the coupling between the dipole moment of the two level system and the cavity mode with volume and electric field polarized along . [4] The energy eigenvalues and eigenstates for this model are

where is the detuning, and the angle is defined as

Given the eigenstates of the system, the time evolution operator can be written down in the form

If the system starts in the state , where the atom is in the ground state of the two level system and there are photons in the cavity mode, the application of the time evolution operator yields

The probability that the two level system is in the excited state as a function of time is then

where is identified as the Rabi frequency. For the case that there is no electric field in the cavity, that is, the photon number is zero, the Rabi frequency becomes . Then, the probability that the two level system goes from its ground state to its excited state as a function of time is

For a cavity that admits a single mode perfectly resonant with the energy difference between the two energy levels, the detuning vanishes, and becomes a squared sinusoid with unit amplitude and period

Generalization to N atoms

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The situation in which two level systems are present in a single-mode cavity is described by the Tavis–Cummings model [5] , which has Hamiltonian

Under the assumption that all two level systems have equal individual coupling strength to the field, the ensemble as a whole will have enhanced coupling strength . As a result, the vacuum Rabi splitting is correspondingly enhanced by a factor of .[6]

See also

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References and notes

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  1. ^ Hiroyuki Yokoyama & Ujihara K (1995). Spontaneous emission and laser oscillation in microcavities. Boca Raton: CRC Press. p. 6. ISBN 0-8493-3786-0.
  2. ^ Kerry Vahala (2004). Optical microcavities. Singapore: World Scientific. p. 368. ISBN 981-238-775-7.
  3. ^ Rodney Loudon (2000). The quantum theory of light. Oxford UK: Oxford University Press. p. 172. ISBN 0-19-850177-3.
  4. ^ Marlan O. Scully, M. Suhail Zubairy (1997). Quantum Optics. Cambridge University Press. p. 5. ISBN 0521435951.
  5. ^ Schine, Nathan (2019). Quantum Hall Physics with Photons (PhD). University of Chicago.
  6. ^ Mark Fox (2006). Quantum Optics: An Introduction. Boca Raton: OUP Oxford. p. 208. ISBN 0198566735.