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arXiv:2304.09583 · The Journal of Chemical Physics

The role of dephasing for dark state coupling in a molecular Tavis–Cummings model

Eric Davidsson, Markus Kowalewski

Published Jul 26, 2023• 22 citations
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Abstract

The collective coupling of an ensemble of molecules to a light field is commonly described by the Tavis-Cummings model. This model includes numerous eigenstates that are optically decoupled from the optically bright polariton states. Accessing these dark states requires breaking the symmetry in the corresponding Hamiltonian. In this paper, we investigate the influence of non-unitary processes on the dark state dynamics in the molecular Tavis-Cummings model. The system is modeled with a Lindblad equation that includes pure dephasing, as it would be caused by weak interactions with an environment, and photon decay. Our simulations show that the rate of pure dephasing, as well as the number of two-level systems, has a significant influence on the dark state population.

DOI
10.1063/5.0155302

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The collective coupling of an ensemble of molecules to a light field is commonly described by the Tavis-Cummings model. This model includes numerous eigenstates that are optically decoupled from the optically bright polariton states. Accessing these dark states requires breaking the symmetry in the corresponding Hamiltonian. In this paper, we investigate the influence of non-unitary processes on the dark state dynamics in the molecular Tavis-Cummings model. The system is modeled with a Lindblad equation that includes pure dephasing, as it would be caused by weak interactions with an environment, and photon decay. Our simulations show that the rate of pure dephasing, as well as the number of two-level systems, has a significant influence on the dark state population.
We employed the Tavis-Cummings model to study the pump-probe spectra of molecular polaritons. To describe the dissipative effects caused by the environment, the population decays of the photon mode and the two level states (TLSs), as well as the fast component of the dephasing of TLSs, are described by using the Lindblad equation. The effect of static disorder in the TLS transition frequency is incorporated into the equation of motion of the density matrix. The pump-probe spectra of the model system are calculated using the optical response function approach. Pronounced Rabi oscillations are observed in the pump-probe spectra, which are signatures of the strong light-matter coupling between the cavity mode and the collective bright state of the TLSs. To help understand the pump-probe spectra, we also simulate the laser pulse induced dynamics of the bright state of the molecular polaritons. The results show that the bright state lifetime is primarily determined by the dephasing time of the TLSs, consistent with the fast decay of the Rabi oscillations observed in the pump-probe spectra. Once the coherence decays, the long-time pump-probe response is dominated by the excited state population of the dark state manifold.
Strong coupling of organic molecules to the vacuum field of a nanoscale cavity can be used to modify their chemical and physical properties. We extend the Tavis-Cummings model for molecular ensembles and show that the often neglected interaction terms arising from the static dipole moment and the dipole self-energy are essential for a correct description of the light-matter interaction in polaritonic chemistry. On the basis of a full quantum description, we simulate the excited-state dynamics and spectroscopy of MgH+ molecules resonantly coupled to an optical cavity. We show that the inclusion of static dipole moments and the dipole self-energy is necessary to obtain a consistent model. We construct an efficient two-level system approach that reproduces the main features of the real molecular system and may be used to simulate larger molecular ensembles.
Confined electromagnetic modes strongly couple to collective excitations in ensembles of quantum emitters, producing light–matter hybrid states known as polaritons. Under such conditions, the discrete multilevel spectrum of molecular systems offers an appealing playground for exploring multiphoton processes. This work contrasts predictions from the Tavis–Cummings model in which the material is a collection of two-level systems, with the implications of considering additional energy levels with harmonic and anharmonic structures. We discuss the exact eigenspectrum, up to the second excitation manifold, of an arbitrary number N of oscillators collectively coupled to a single cavity mode in the rotating-wave approximation. Elaborating on our group-theoretic approach [New J. Phys. 23, 063081 (2021)], we simplify the brute-force diagonalization of N2 × N2 Hamiltonians to the eigendecomposition of, at most, 4 × 4 matrices for arbitrary N. We thoroughly discuss the eigenstates and the consequences of weak and strong anharmonicities. Furthermore, we find resonant conditions between bipolaritons and anharmonic transitions where two-photon absorption can be enhanced. Finally, we conclude that energy shifts in the polaritonic states induced by anharmonicities become negligible for large N. Thus, calculations with a single or few quantum emitters qualitatively fail to represent the nonlinear optical response of the collective strong coupling regime. Our work highlights the rich physics of multilevel anharmonic systems coupled to cavities absent in standard models of quantum optics. We also provide concise tabulated expressions for eigenfrequencies and transition amplitudes, which should serve as a reference for future spectroscopic studies of molecular polaritons.
An empirical framework for studying the way vacuum fluctuations in a Fabry–Perot cavity produce collective light–matter hybrid states (polariton states) is reported. The reason that the Tavis–Cummings model, where a single mode of the radiation field couples to all the molecules, succeeds is discussed in terms of the strong phase correlation of the vacuum fluctuations in the cavity, which produces a single effective cavity mode (ECM). The model is used to study the onset of the collective state, or “superradiant phase”, for ensembles of molecules with significant disorder in their transition energies, as a function of cavity strength factor, from low Q cavities to high Q cavities. A key result is the quantification of the coherence of the ensemble of the lowest energy eigenstate. This is assessed, primarily, using an entropy distance measure. The statistical model provides a physical intuition for the formation of coherence of polariton states when the collective coupling is strong enough that they dominate over the tail of the dark-state density-of-states.
The interaction of an ensemble of NNN two-level quantum emitters with a single-mode electromagnetic field is described by the Tavis-Cummings model. There, the collectively enhanced light-matter coupling strength is given by gN=Ng‾1{g}_{N}=\sqrt{N}{\overline{g}}_{1}gN​=N​g​1​, where g‾1{\overline{g}}_{1}g​1​ is the ensemble-averaged single-emitter coupling strength. This model has been employed to describe and to analyze numerous cavity-based experiments. Here, we show that this is only justified if the effective scattering rate into noncavity modes is negligible compared to the cavity's free-spectral range. In terms of experimental parameters, this requires that the optical depth of the ensemble is low, a condition that is violated in several state-of-the-art experiments. We give quantitative conditions for the validity of the Tavis-Cummings model and derive a more general Hamiltonian description that takes into account the cascaded interaction of the photons with all consecutive emitters. We show that the predictions of our cascaded model can differ quantitatively and even qualitatively from those obtained with the Tavis-Cummings model. Finally, we present experimental data, for which the deviation from the predictions of the Tavis-Cummings model is apparent. Our findings are relevant for all experiments in which optically dense ensembles of quantum emitters are coupled to an optical resonator.
The purpose of this article is to present a comprehensive study of the Tavis–Cummings model from a system-theoretic perspective. A typical form of the Tavis–Cummings model is composed of an ensemble of noninteracting two-level systems (TLSs) that are collectively coupled to a common cavity resonator. The associated quantum linear passive system is proposed, whose canonical form reveals typical features of the Tavis–Cummings model, includingN\sqrt{N}N​- scaling, dark states, bright states, single-excitation superradiant, and subradiant states. The passivity of this linear system is related to the vacuum Rabi mode splitting phenomenon in Tavis–Cummings systems. On the basis of the linear model, an analytic form is presented for the steady-state output state of the Tavis–Cummings model driven by a single-photon state. Master equations are used to study the excitation properties of the Tavis–Cummings model in the multiexcitation scenario. Finally, in terms of the transition matrix for a linear time-varying system, a computational framework is proposed for calculating the state of the Tavis–Cummings model, which is applicable to the multiexcitation case.