Recently, a superradiant phase transition first predicted theoretically in the quantum Rabi model (QRM) has been verified experimentally. This further stimulates the interest in the study of the process of phase transition and the nature of the superradiant phase since the fundamental role of the QRM in describing the interaction of light and matter, and more importantly, the QRM contains rich physics deserving further exploration despite its simplicity. Here we propose a scheme consisting of two successive diagonalizations to accurately obtain the ground-state and excited states wavefunctions of the QRM in full parameter regime ranging from weak to deep-strong couplings. Thus, one is able to see how the phase transition occurs and how the photons populate in Fock space of the superradiant phase. We characterize the photon populations by borrowing the distribution concept in random matrix theory and find that the photon population follows a Poissonian-like distribution once the phase transition takes place and further exhibits the statistics of Gaussian unitary ensemble with increasing coupling strength. More interestingly, the photons in the excited states behave even like the statistics of Gaussian orthogonal ensemble. Our results not only deepen understanding on the superradiant phase transition but also provide an insight on the nature of the superradiant phase of the QRM and related models.
Recently, a superradiant phase transition first predicted theoretically in the quantum Rabi model (QRM) has been verified experimentally. This further stimulates the interest in the study of the process of phase transition and the nature of the superradiant phase since the fundamental role of the QRM in describing the interaction of light and matter, and more importantly, the QRM contains rich physics deserving further exploration despite its simplicity. Here we propose a scheme consisting of two successive diagonalizations to accurately obtain the ground-state and excited states wavefunctions of the QRM in full parameter regime ranging from weak to deep-strong couplings. Thus, one is able to see how the phase transition occurs and how the photons populate in Fock space of the superradiant phase. We characterize the photon populations by borrowing the distribution concept in random matrix theory and find that the photon population follows a Poissonian-like distribution once the phase transition takes place and further exhibits the statistics of Gaussian unitary ensemble with increasing coupling strength. More interestingly, the photons in the excited states behave even like the statistics of Gaussian orthogonal ensemble. Our results not only deepen understanding on the superradiant phase transition but also provide an insight on the nature of the superradiant phase of the QRM and related models.
Abstract Phase transitions are both thermodynamically and quantum-mechanically ubiquitous in nature and laboratories, and their understanding remains one of the most active issues in modern physics and related disciplines. The Landau theory provides a general framework to describe phenomenologically phase transitions by introducing order parameters and associated symmetry breaking. This theory is also taken as a starting point to explore critical phenomena in connection with phase transitions in the renormalization group, which provides a complete theoretical description of behaviors close to critical points. In this context, the microscopic mechanism of phase transitions remains unclear. In this study, we explore the microscopic mechanism of the superradiant phase transition in the quantum Rabi model (QRM). First, we perform a diagonalization operation in an operator space to obtain three fundamental patterns, denoted as λ 1 , λ 2 , and λ 3 , involved in the QRM. Then, we explicitly analyze the energy evolutions of these patterns with increasing coupling strength. The observed characteristic behaviors reveal the microscopic mechanism of the superradiant phase transition as a consequence of competition between patterns due to different phase relations. In other words, with increasing coupling strength, the pattern λ 1 drives the phase transition, the pattern λ 2 exhibits a similar response speed but less energy compensation than the pattern λ 1 , and the pattern λ 3 exhibits a slow response speed but plays a key role in the balance between it and the pattern λ 1 , which stabilizes the new phase. This type of dissecting mechanism explains why and how the superradiant phase transition occurs in the QRM and paves the way for exploring the microscopic mechanism of phase transitions that occur frequently in nature.
The ground state of quantum Rabi model (QRM) exhibits rich nonclassical states including squeezed state, cat state, and entangled state in different parameter regimes. In this paper, we firstly use the polaron picture to figure out the process of superradiant phase transition (SPT) in view of the nonclassical states. According to the polaron wave functions, the squeezed state extends to whole parameter regimes, and a small but non-zero weighted antipolaron is necessary to form novel semi-cat states. Moreover, the behavior of superradiance in the QRM can be viewed as the same displacement of the cat states from zero to a finite value, while the ground state becomes entangled state resulting from the emergence of spin-up state. On the other hand, the nonclassical states can be intuitively characterized by the Wigner functions with analytical expressions in the polaron picture, and the Wigner negativity is also evaluated to measure the nonclassicality. Based on the squeezing and superradiance, a classification of the coupling strength for the nonclassical states containing in the ground state is presented, and the process of the SPT is also revealed by the photon number distribution in Fock space, which is important to understand the fundamental quantum physics in the QRM. Our work provides a guidance for preparing the nonclassical states in experiments based on the QRM.
The ground state of the quantum Rabi model (QRM) exhibits rich nonclassical states including the squeezed state, cat state, and entangled state in different parameter regimes. In this paper, we first use the polaron picture with high precision and fidelity to figure out the process of the superradiant phase transition (SPT) in view of the nonclassical states. The squeezing effect is considered to be a result of the higher-order excitations and important in order to understand the fundamental quantum physics of the SPT in the QRM. According to the polaron wave functions, the squeezed state extends across the entire range of parameters. Based on the squeezing and superradiance, a classification of the coupling strength for the nonclassical states containing the ground state is presented; the system sequentially goes through the vacuum states, the squeezed vacuum states, the squeezed cat states, and the cat states as the coupling strength increases. The process of the SPT is also demonstrated by the photon number distribution in Fock space, and then the novel behavior of parity chains for the SPT is revealed. Additionally, the nonclassical states can be intuitively characterized by the Wigner functions with analytical expressions in the polaron picture, and the Wigner negativity is evaluated to measure the nonclassicality. We find that a small but nonzero weighted antipolaron is necessary to form novel semicat states. Our paper provides guidance for preparing nonclassical states in experiments based on the light-matter interaction.
The Rabi model plays a fundamental role in understanding light-matter interaction. It reduces to the Jaynes-Cummings model via the rotating-wave approximation, which is applicable only to the cases of near resonance and weak coupling. However, recent experimental breakthroughs in upgrading light-matter coupling order require understanding the physics of the full quantum Rabi model (QRM). Despite the fact that its integrability and energy spectra have been exactly obtained, the challenge to formulate an exact wave function in a general case still hinders physical exploration of the QRM. Here we unveil a ground-state phase diagram of the QRM, consisting of a quadpolaron and a bipolaron as well as their changeover in the weak-, strong-, and intermediate-coupling regimes, respectively. An unexpected overweighted antipolaron is revealed in the quadpolaron state, and a hidden scaling behavior relevant to symmetry breaking is found in the bipolaron state. An experimentally accessible parameter is proposed to test these states, which might provide novel insights into the nature of the light-matter interaction for all regimes of the coupling strengths.
Parity describing the symmetry of quantum mechanics wavefunction under space inversion transformation not only plays an essential role in solving quantum systems but also can be used to manipulate and measure the motional quantum states of such hybrid quantum systems as quantum Rabi model(QRM) and/or its variants through parity measurements. Here we address an exotic parity behavior of the QRM in its superradiant phase by numerical exact diagonalization, namely, the parities of eigenstates of the QRM behave irregular in the strong coupling regime but the sum of parities for each pair of eigenstates beginning from the ground state remains vanishing. It is found that this exotic behavior originates from the comparability of the photon distribution in the odd and even components of Fock basis when the eigenenergies of each pair of eigenstates approach enough to each other and physically is due to the emergent double-well potential induced by the strong coupling between the single-mode photon field and the two-level atom. The result not only uncovers the physics not known previously in the QRM but also makes an intrinsic limitation on the measurement precision of motional quantum states through parity measurements in modern quantum science and technologies.
By analytically solving the quantum Rabi model, we investigate the photonic properties of its ground eigenstate. In particular, we find that in the deep strong coupling regime, where the coupling strength g exceeds the mode frequency ω, the photonic state is effectively squeezed in one of its quadratures. The squeezing reaches its maximum at the curve corresponding to the quantum phase transition of the quantum Rabi system, and decreases rapidly on both sides of the phase transition. Notably, for g/ω≈3, which is experimentally testable in existing trapped-ion platforms, the achievable squeezing parameter can reach approximately r≈0.8. Intriguingly, the photonic state is squeezed while its number distribution follows a super-Poissonian distribution, with the largest deviation from Poissonian behavior occurring at the phase transition between the normal and superradiant phases. In other words, the ground state of the quantum Rabi model contains super-Poissonian quantum squeezed photons.