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arXiv:1211.5665 · Physical Review E

Markovian master equation and thermodynamics of a two-level system in a strong laser field

Krzysztof Szczygielski, David Gelbwaser-Klimovsky, Robert Alicki

Published Jan 17, 2013• 108 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The recently developed technique combining the weak-coupling limit with the Floquet formalism is applied to a model of a two-level atom driven by a strong laser field and weakly coupled to heat baths. First, the case of a single electromagnetic bath at zero temperature is discussed and the formula for resonance fluorescence is derived. The expression describes the well-known Mollow triplet, but its details differ from the standard ones based on additional simplifying assumptions. The second example describes the case of two thermal reservoirs: an electromagnetic one at finite temperature and the second dephasing one, which can be realized as a phononic or buffer gas reservoir. It is shown using the developed thermodynamical approach that the latter system can work in two regimes depending on the detuning sign: a heat pump transporting heat from the dephasing reservoir to an electromagnetic bath or heating both, always at the expense of work supplied by the laser field.

DOI
10.1103/physreve.87.012120

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The recently developed technique combining the weak-coupling limit with the Floquet formalism is applied to a model of a two-level atom driven by a strong laser field and weakly coupled to heat baths. First, the case of a single electromagnetic bath at zero temperature is discussed and the formula for resonance fluorescence is derived. The expression describes the well-known Mollow triplet, but its details differ from the standard ones based on additional simplifying assumptions. The second example describes the case of two thermal reservoirs: an electromagnetic one at finite temperature and the second dephasing one, which can be realized as a phononic or buffer gas reservoir. It is shown using the developed thermodynamical approach that the latter system can work in two regimes depending on the detuning sign: a heat pump transporting heat from the dephasing reservoir to an electromagnetic bath or heating both, always at the expense of work supplied by the laser field.
We study the quantum thermodynamics of a coherent macroscopic electromagnetic field (laser) coupled to a two-level system (qubit) near resonance, from weak- to strong-driving regimes. This combined system is, in turn, weakly coupled to a thermal radiation field and can be described by an autonomous quantum master equation. We show that the laser acts as an autonomous work source and that, in the macroscopic limit, the work produced is independent of the phase of the laser. Using the dressed qubit approach, we show that the variation of energy in the laser is not the work transferred to the dressed qubit, which is instead obtained from the ``dressed laser''---a coherent superposition of the laser and the qubit. Using a two-point measurement technique with counting fields, we obtain the full counting statistics for the work of the laser and dressed laser, and show that they satisfy the Crooks fluctuation theorems. We then use these theorems as criteria to investigate the thermodynamic consistency of quantum master equations, first in the autonomous setup for the combined system, then in the nonautonomous setup for the quantum system where the coherent field is eliminated and effectively described by a time-dependent external field. Treating the laser as an external field is known to yield expressions for the work which are in contradiction with quantum thermodynamics predictions in the strong-driving regime. We show that these inconsistencies stem from a confusion between the laser and dressed laser, and show how to correct them. We also derive a generalized Bloch master equation, thermodynamically consistent across all driving regimes, from which the Bloch and Floquet master equations can be obtained using additional approximations (of which we also examine the consistency).
We formulate a Floquet-Markov master equation, which combines an open quantum system approach with Floquet theory, for two spatially separated two-level atoms driven by a strong electromagnetic field and coupled to a common electromagnetic bath. This equation features a modified form of dipole-dipole interactions compared to the case of weakly driven atoms, giving rise to new, previously undescribed shifts of the Floquet quasienergies. We provide a detailed physical interpretation of the modified dipole-dipole interactions of two-level atoms, discuss their manifestations in two-atom resonance fluorescence, and extract the distance dependence of the dipole-dipole force between the atoms. The extensive discussion of two-level atoms is complemented by a brief study of one-dimensional hydrogen atoms (otherwise essentially described without approximations), with focus on the dipole-dipole interactions of periodically driven atoms whose electronic degrees of freedom are locked in non-dispersive wave packet states.
A non-Markovian microscopic theory for the spontaneous emission spectrum of a two-level atom driven by a strong laser field and undergoing dephasing via the interaction with a thermal bath is developed. The present theory is valid for an arbitrary correlation time scale of the bath relative to the linewidth and interpolates from the Markovian to the static limits. Model calculations using the stochastic line-shape function of Kubo show how the characteristic triplet spectrum is modified by the interaction with the bath. The present results generalize our previous studies of resonance Raman scattering in a three-level system in a strong radiation field.
A detailed and unified account of the theory of the generalized Bloch equations is presented. The equations apply to a two-level system weakly coupled to a heat bath and subject to a monochromatic rotating field of arbitrary intensity. The relaxation tensor obtained is explicitly field-dependent. The derivation is valid for general coupling to a quantum heat bath. The generalized Bloch equations are shown to be thermodynamically consistent, as opposed to the standard Bloch equations. Different limits of the generalized Bloch equations are examined and related to previous studies. The potential use of the generalized Bloch equations as a probe of the bath spectral density is demonstrated for the case of a two-level system embedded in a Debye solid.
We combine the formalisms of Floquet theory and full counting statistics with a Markovian embedding strategy to access the dynamics and thermodynamics of a periodically driven thermal machine beyond the conventional Born–Markov approximation. The working medium is a two-level system and we drive the tunneling as well as the coupling to one bath with the same period. We identify four different operating regimes of our machine which include a heat engine and a refrigerator. As the coupling strength with one bath is increased, the refrigerator regime disappears, the heat engine regime narrows and their efficiency and coefficient of performance decrease. Furthermore, our model can reproduce the setup of laser cooling of trapped ions in a specific parameter limit.
We present a comprehensive theoretical study of the resonance fluorescence spectra of an coherently-driven quantum dot (QD) placed inside a high-QQQ semiconductor cavity and interacting with an acoustic-phonon bath. We derive a quantum master equation (ME) in the polaron frame, which includes exciton-phonon and exciton-cavity coupling to all orders. This work details and extends the theory used in a recent paper [C. Roy and S. Hughes, Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 247403 (2011)] to describe the QD Mollow triplet in the regime of semiconductor cavity QED. Here, we introduce two ME forms, Nakajima-Zwanzig and time convolutionless (TC), both to second order in the system--phonon-reservoir perturbation. In the polaron frame, these two ME forms are shown to yield equivalent population dynamics and fluorescence spectra for a continuous wave (cw) driving field. We also demonstrate that a Markov approximation is valid for computing the incoherent scattering processes, and we subsequently exploit the TC ME to explore the resonance fluorescence spectra of an exciton-driven QD. Both cavity-emitted and exciton-emitted spectra are studied, and these are found to have qualitatively different spectral features. Using a coherent driving field, the well-known characteristics of the atomic Mollow triplet are shown to be considerably modified with electron--acoustic-phonon scattering, and we highlight the key effects arising from both cavity coupling and electron-phonon coupling. Regimes of pronounced cavity feeding and anharmonic cavity QED are exemplified, and we find that the cavity coupling depends sensitively on the exciton-cavity detuning and the temperature of the phonon bath. We show how the full width at half maximum (linewidth) of the Mollow-triplet sidebands varies as a function of the square of the Rabi frequency of the cw pump. Phonon-mediated cavity coupling also contributes to the spectral broadening of the Mollow triplet, depending upon the exciton-cavity detuning and the strength of the exciton-cavity coupling rate. Finally, we calculate the fluorescence spectra for off-resonance cw driving and investigate the resulting Mollow-triplet linewidths.