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Physical Review A

Microscopic foundation of macroscopic quantum optics

Michael E. Crenshaw

Published Mar 18, 2003• 7 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A limited equivalence between microscopic and macroscopic quantizations of the electromagnetic field in a dielectric is established. We demonstrate that macroscopic canonical quantization of the electromagnetic field in an idealized absorptionless dielectric is equivalent to microscopic quantization followed by the elimination of the material degrees of freedom in the limit of an adiabatic response of the oscillators averaged over a quantization volume. We demonstrate that a loss of generality and extensibility accompanies the reduction of the full microscopic theory.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.67.033805

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A limited equivalence between microscopic and macroscopic quantizations of the electromagnetic field in a dielectric is established. We demonstrate that macroscopic canonical quantization of the electromagnetic field in an idealized absorptionless dielectric is equivalent to microscopic quantization followed by the elimination of the material degrees of freedom in the limit of an adiabatic response of the oscillators averaged over a quantization volume. We demonstrate that a loss of generality and extensibility accompanies the reduction of the full microscopic theory.
We derive the macroscopic electromagnetic-field and medium operators for a linear dispersive medium with a microscopic model. As an alternative to the previous treatments in the literature, we show that the canonical momentum for the macroscopic field can be chosen to be −∊0Ê instead of −Dˆ with the standard minimal-coupling Hamiltonian. We find that, despite the change in the field operator normalization constants, the equal-time commutators among the macroscopic electric-field, magnetic-field, and medium operators have the same values as their microscopic counterparts under a coarse-grained approximation. This preservation of the equal-time commutator is important from a fundamental standpoint, such as the preservation of micro-causality for macroscopic quantities. The existence of more than one normal frequency mode at each k vector in a realistic causal-response medium is shown to be responsible for the commutator preservation. The process of macroscopic averaging is discussed in our derivation. The macroscopic field operators we derive are valid for a wide range of frequencies below, above, and around resonances. Our derivation covers the lossless, slightly lossy, and dispersionless as well as dispersive regimes of the medium. The local-field correction is also included in the formalism by inclusion of dipole–dipole interactions. Comparisons are made with other derivations of the macroscopic field operators. Using our theory, we discuss the questions of field propagation across a dielectric boundary and the decay rate of an atom embedded in a dielectric medium. We also discuss the question of squeezing in a linear dielectric medium and the extension of our theory to the case of a nonuniform medium.
Theories which have been used to describe the quantized electromagnetic field interacting with a nonlinear dielectric medium are either phenomenological or derived by quantizing the macroscopic Maxwell equations. Here we take a different approach and derive a Hamiltonian describing interacting fields from one which contains both field and matter degrees of freedom. The medium is modeled as a collection of two-level atoms, and these interact with the electromagnetic field. The atoms are grouped into effective spins and the the Holstein-Primakoff representation of the spin operators is used to expand them in inverse powers of the total spin. When the lowest order term of the interaction is combined with the free atomic and field Hamiltonians, a Hamiltonian describing a theory of noninteracting polaritons results. When higher order terms are expressed in terms of polariton operators standard nonlinear optical interactions emerge. These are then compared to the results of phenomenological and macroscopic theories. The theory is also used to derive an effective Hamiltonian describing counterpropagating modes in a nonlinear medium.
After giving an outline of the quantization scheme based on the microscopic Hopfield model of a dielectric bulk material, we show how the classical phenomenological Maxwell equations of the electromagnetic field in the presence of dielectric matter of given space- and frequency-dependent complex permittivity can be transferred to quantum theory. Including in the theory the interaction of the medium-assisted field with atomic systems, we present both the minimal-coupling Hamiltonian and the multipolar-coupling Hamiltonian in the Coulomb gauge. To illustrate the concept, we discuss the input--output relations of radiation and the transformation of radiation-field quantum states at absorbing four-port devices, and the spontaneous decay of an excited atom near the surface of an absorbing body and in a spherical micro-cavity with intrinsic material losses. Finally, we give an extension of the quantization scheme to other media such as amplifying media, magnetic media, and nonlinear media.
We present a fully canonical quantization scheme for the electromagnetic field in dispersive and lossy linear dielectrics. This scheme is based on a microscopic model, in which the medium is represented by a collection of interacting matter fields. We calculate the exact eigenoperators for the coupled system and express the electromagnetic field operators in terms of them. The dielectric constant of the medium is explicitly derived and is shown to satisfy the Kramers-Kronig relations. We apply these results to treat the propagation of light in dielectrics and obtain simple expressions for the electromagnetic field in the medium in terms of space-dependent creation and annihilation operators. These operators satisfy a set of equal-space commutation relations and obey spatial Langevin equations of evolution. This justifies the use of such operators in phenomenological models in quantum optics. We also obtain two interesting relationships between the group and the phase velocity in dielectrics.
The macroscopic electromagnetic field is quantized in a linear isotropic permeable-dielectric medium by associating a proper damped quantum-mechanical harmonic oscillator with each mode of the radiation field. We introduce a particular form of the Langevin equation with two memory functions and two random impulses to describe the motion of a damped oscillator. A fully canonical approach is used to quantize the damped oscillator, the conjugate momentum is defined and the quantum-mechanical Hamiltonian is introduced. This brings forth a direct method for the quantization of the radiation field and at the same time introduces an effective Hamiltonian operator. Special attention is paid to the vacuum field fluctuation in permeable dielectrics.