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Journal of the Optical Society of America B

Collapse and revivals in a two-photon absorption process

P. M. Alsing, Muhammad Suhail Zubairy

Published Feb 1, 1987• 156 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The two-photon absorption process is studied by considering the interaction of a quantized single-mode field with an effective two-level atom through intermediate states. The equations of motion of the coupled atom–field probability amplitudes for the effective two-level atom are obtained after adiabatically eliminating the intermediate states. These equations are then solved in the rotating-wave approximation. The time constants associated with the Rabi oscillation, collapse, and revival of the atomic inversion are derived, and the photon statistics are discussed with special reference to photon antibunching.

DOI
10.1364/josab.4.000177

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The two-photon absorption process is studied by considering the interaction of a quantized single-mode field with an effective two-level atom through intermediate states. The equations of motion of the coupled atom–field probability amplitudes for the effective two-level atom are obtained after adiabatically eliminating the intermediate states. These equations are then solved in the rotating-wave approximation. The time constants associated with the Rabi oscillation, collapse, and revival of the atomic inversion are derived, and the photon statistics are discussed with special reference to photon antibunching.
We investigate the atomic inversion dynamics when a multilevel atom interacts with a two-mode quantized radiation field in a Raman-type process. By utilizing the rotating-wave approximation and adiabatically eliminating all but two of the atomic levels, we derive a nonlinear-interaction Hamiltonian for this system. Working in the Schr\"odinger picture, we obtain numerical results that depend on the width and average photon number of the field statistics. Varying these photon statistics allows us to uncover secondary revivals that arise due to the complicated double sum over the two field modes that appear in the solutions. The origin of this phenomenon is described analytically.
In the preceding chapters concerning the interaction of a radiation field with matter, we assumed the field to be classical. In many situations this assumption is valid. There are, however, many instances where a classical field fails to explain experimentally observed results and a quantized description of the field is required. This is, for example, true of spontaneous emission in an atomic system which was described phenomenologically in Chapter 5. For a rigorous treatment of the atomic level decay in free space, we need to consider the interaction of the atom with the vacuum modes of the universe. Even in the simplest system involving the interaction of a single-mode radiation field with a single two-level atom, the predictions for the dynamics of the atom are quite different in the semiclassical theory and the fully quantum theory. In the absence of the decay process, the semiclassical theory predicts Rabi oscillations for the atomic inversion whereas the quantum theory predicts certain collapse and revival phenomena due to the quantum aspects of the field. These interesting quantum field theoretical predictions have been experimentally verified. In this chapter we discuss the interaction of the quantized radiation field with the two-level atomic system described by a Hamiltonian in the dipole and the rotating-wave approximations. For a single-mode field it reduces to a particularly simple form. This is a very interesting Hamiltonian in quantum optics for several reasons. First, it can be solved exactly for arbitrary coupling constants and exhibits some true quantum dynamical effects such as collapse followed by periodic revivals of the atomic inversion.
We present a general procedure to describe the dynamics of N degenerate quantized fields interacting resonantly with a two–level atom, all coupled with the same strength, within the rotating–wave approximation. Starting from the analysis of the two and three field cases, we generalize the method by identifying dynamical invariants that lead to a factorized form of the time–evolution operator. A unitary transformation reduces the problem to an effective Jaynes–Cummings Hamiltonian, where only one field interacts with the atom and the remaining modes contribute as free fields. Assuming initially coherent fields and an atomic superposition, we compute the atomic inversion and the mean photon number, revealing vacuum Rabi oscillations with a frequency determined by an effective coupling constant that exceeds the individual atom–field coupling, as well as the characteristic collapse-revival behavior.
Photon statistics in some fully quantized models of the interaction of a two-level atom with a single-mode radiation field have been studied using the operator equations of motion. Expressions for the photon number distribution and the mean photon number are presented for various initial conditions. It is found that the mean photon number may show decays and revivals of coherence similar to those of the atomic inversion in the coherent-state Jaynes-Cummings model. Application of these models to the study of multiphoton laser, absorption, and emission processes is also discussed.