We consider a system comprising two groups of quantum dimers placed in a common electromagnetic cavity, and controlled by selectively applying a static external potential to one of the groups. We show that in the regime of deep strong coupling to vacuum electromagnetic fluctuations, the emergent photon-assisted interaction between the dimers leads to a strongly non-linear quantized cross-polarization response of the first, unbiased group of dimers to the potential applied to the second group. The total polarization shows a series of almost ideal steps whose number and position depends on the parity of the numbers of dimers in the groups. This non-perturbative effect is a distinctive feature of mesoscopic systems comprising finite number of dimers and disappears in the thermodynamic limit which is commonly used in the desciption of the generalized Dicke models.
We consider a system comprising two groups of quantum dimers placed in a common electromagnetic cavity, and controlled by selectively applying a static external potential to one of the groups. We show that in the regime of deep strong coupling to vacuum electromagnetic fluctuations, the emergent photon-assisted interaction between the dimers leads to a strongly non-linear quantized cross-polarization response of the first, unbiased group of dimers to the potential applied to the second group. The total polarization shows a series of almost ideal steps whose number and position depends on the parity of the numbers of dimers in the groups. This non-perturbative effect is a distinctive feature of mesoscopic systems comprising finite number of dimers and disappears in the thermodynamic limit which is commonly used in the desciption of the generalized Dicke models.
The structure of solids and their phases is mainly determined by static Coulomb forces while the coupling of charges to the dynamical, i.e., quantized degrees of freedom of the electromagnetic field plays only a secondary role. Recently, it has been speculated that this general rule can be overcome in the context of cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED), where the coupling of dipoles to a single field mode can be dramatically enhanced. Here we present a first exact analysis of the ground states of a dipolar cavity QED system in the non-perturbative coupling regime, where electrostatic and dynamical interactions play an equally important role. Specifically, we show how strong and long-range vacuum fluctuations modify the states of dipolar matter and induce novel phases with unusual properties. Beyond a purely fundamental interest, these general mechanisms can be important for potential applications, ranging from cavity-assisted chemistry to quantum technologies based on ultrastrongly coupled circuit QED systems.
We investigate the control of interacting matter through strong coupling to a single electromagnetic mode, such as the photon mode in a Fabry-Perot or split-ring cavity. For this purpose, we analyze the exact effective theory for the collective light-matter hybrid modes of a generic system of N transition dipoles within an interacting solid. The approach allows to predict properties of the coupled light-matter system from the nonlinear response functions of the uncoupled matter ``outside the cavity''. The limit of large N corresponds to a conventional macroscopic description based on the polarizability of matter. In this limit, the cavity does not affect the static ferroelectric response. Corrections, which are needed to understand finite size systems and to obtain the nonlinear light-matter response, can be obtained from the non-linear susceptibilities of the matter outside the cavity. The theory is benchmarked for the Dicke model, and for a quantum Ising model which serves as a minimal mean-field model for a quantum paraelectric material like SrTiO3.
We propose a generalized system of nonequilibrium cavity QED with interacting dipoles coupled to a single-mode of an electromagnetic field in strong-, ultrastrong-, and deep-strong-coupling regimes. To illustrate the applicability of the system, an extended Dicke model is developed for atoms undergoing Raman transitions between the ground states in the presence of laser fields and considering dipole-dipole interactions; the latter has been neglected in many previous works. We have studied the effect of a ferroelectric and an antiferroelectric arrangement on the phase transition for both a finite and an infinite number of dipoles. An additional superradiant phase is observed in the deep-strong-coupling regime due to influence of the dipole-dipole interaction term. A high degree of dipole-dipole entanglement occurs for the antiferroelectric arrangement in the deep-strong regime, whereas it gets disentangled quite rapidly for the ferroelectric arrangement. A sharp transition of system parameters is observed in the ultrastrong-coupling regime and beyond. The dipole-dipole interaction also influences the spectra of the system, inducing a significant shift in the peaks, and modifies the average number of photons emitted.
Interaction of the vacuum field of an optical mode with an electronic two-level system can drive non-perturbative light-matter dynamics, resulting in an exotic quantum ground state containing a sizeable population of virtual excitations. In the deep-strong coupling (DSC) regime, where the Rabi frequency,ΩR, exceeds the eigen-frequencies of the coupled systems, this extreme ground state can result in spectacular effects of cavity-QED, such as the expected release of the virtual photon ground state population as vacuum radiation by non-adiabatic modulation of the coupling mechanism [1], [2]. However, for resonant coupling of two single modes [3], the finite oscillator strength of resonant electronic excitation sets a natural limit to the achievable coupling strength, hindering further exploration of this exciting field.
In recent years, the study of quantum electrodynamics (QED) in light-matter interactions has discovered various interesting phenomenons that orient many applications. However, due to the ambient entanglement among photons and atoms, few-particle dynamics remains challenging to analyze precisely and limits the progress in several fields. In few-particle systems, different number of atoms interacting with the light field generates drastically different results, even when there is only a single photon involved in the system. The interference between individual atom’s spontaneous emission wavefunctions can cooperatively alter the effective atom-light coupling strength. Depending on the spatial distance between individual of atoms and the involved cavities in the interaction progresses, the collective spontaneous emission rate can alter drastically from superradiance, where the emission rate is enhanced to a high value proportional to the atom number, to subradiance, where the excited atom ensemble stays in a dark state with the light trapped forever. Superradiance provides a promising mechanism to create an ultra-strong light-matter coupling environment, which is an important ingredient for the design of ultra-fast optical devices, frequency comb generation and quantum mirrors. The dark state of subradiance, on the other hand, is essential for the quantum memory implementation. Also, nontrivial phenomenons also occur when multiple photons interacting with a single atom simultaneously. When a finite number of photons incidents on an atom, their scattering through an atom is highly nonlinear, and one special eigenstate component of such nonlinear process, namely photonic bound states, exhibits many interesting properties in nonlinear quantum optical systems. The photons in such state are strongly bunched with each other, as if a virtual attractive force is in effect. Also, the frequency of photons are anti-correlated so that their total frequency remains a constant value, no matter how arbitrary the frequency of any individual is. Thesefeatures benefit certain nonlinear quantum processes for quantum computing and quantum imaging. Specially for two-photon excitation imaging, the same-parity two-level fluorophore molecules suffers from extremely low excitation efficiencies due to the far off-resonant intermediate states. However, by replacing the current commonly used ultrashort laser pulse illuminations with two photon bound state photon pairs, namely photonic dimers, the efficiency can be enhanced to orders of magnitude higher. Such exceptionally high excitation efficiency can potentially bring the current in vivo deep brain imaging depth from millimeter level to several centimeters. To obtain a stable source of such photonic dimers, it is found that a laser structure with gain medium of two-photon emission materials is capable of generating the coherent state of photonic dimer and can serve as a promising light source for nonlinear quantum optical devices.