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Chinese Physics Letters

The Dynamical Casimir Effect versus Collective Excitations in Atom Ensemble

Xue Zhang, Tai-Yu Zheng, Tian Tian, Shu-Mei Pan

Published Jun 1, 2011• 8 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The Dynamical Casimir effect and collective excitations in atom ensemble are investigated in a non-stationary cavity. The results show that the dynamical Casimir effect leads to the collective excitations of atom ensemble due to absorption of the created photons. This remarkable feature indicates that the atom ensemble can serve as a detector for the process of photon production in a non-stationary cavity. Therefore by measuring the collective excitations of the atom ensemble, the dynamical Casimir effect can indirectly be verified.

DOI
10.1088/0256-307x/28/6/064202

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The Dynamical Casimir effect and collective excitations in atom ensemble are investigated in a non-stationary cavity. The results show that the dynamical Casimir effect leads to the collective excitations of atom ensemble due to absorption of the created photons. This remarkable feature indicates that the atom ensemble can serve as a detector for the process of photon production in a non-stationary cavity. Therefore by measuring the collective excitations of the atom ensemble, the dynamical Casimir effect can indirectly be verified.
An atom interacting with a quantized electromagnetic field in a cavity with time-dependent parameters is considered. Variation of the cavity parameters results in nonstationary dynamics of the field which leads, in turn, to excitation of the atom, even if photons were initially absent in the cavity. We distinguish three mechanisms of such excitation: excitation due to absorption of real photons created by the dynamical Casimir effect, excitation due to absorption of virtual photons during the transient process, and excitation due to nonadiabatic parametric modulation of the atomic Lamb shift. The last mechanism has no relation to the dynamical Casimir effect and thus should be considered as a new vacuum QED effect. Normally all these three mechanisms give a contribution to the amplitude of the atom excitation and are accompanied by the creation of photons. Therefore the presence of an atom in the cavity alters the average number of created photons in comparison with the case of an empty non-stationary cavity. Our consideration is based mainly on a simple model of a two-level atom interacting with a single mode of quantized electromagnetic field. However, our results are qualitatively valid for more realistic models.
We consider an atom interacting with a quantized electromagnetic field inside a cavity with variable parameters. The atom in the ground state located in the initially empty cavity can be excited by variation of cavity parameters. We have discovered two mechanisms of atomic excitation. The first arises due to the interaction of the atom with the non-stationary electromagnetic field created by modulation of cavity parameters. If the characteristic time of variation of cavity parameters is of the order of the atomic transition time, the processes of photon creation and atomic excitation are going on simultaneously and hence excitation of the atom cannot be reduced to trivial absorption of the photons produced by the dynamical Casimir effect. The second mechanism is "shaking" of the atom due to fast modulation of its ground state Lamb shift which takes place as a result of fast variation of cavity arameters. The last mechanism has no connection with the vacuum dynamical Casimir effect. Moreover, it opens a new channel of photon creation in the non-stationary cavity. Nevertheless, the process of photon creation is altered by the presence of the atom in the cavity, even if one disregards the existence of the new channel. In particular, it removes the restriction for creation of only even number of photons and also changes the expectation value for the number of created photons. Our consideration is based on a simple model of a two-level atom interacting with a single mode of the cavity field. Qualitatively our results are valid for a real atom in a physical cavity.
We study analytically and numerically the dynamical Casimir effect in a cavity containing two stationary two-level atoms that interact with the resonance field mode via the Tavis-Cummings Hamiltonian. We determine the modulation frequencies for which the field and atomic excitations are generated and study the corresponding dynamical behaviors in the absence of damping. It is shown that the two-atom setup allows for monitoring of photon generation without interrupting the growth, and different entangled states can be generated during the process.
The effect of excitation of an atom in an initially photon-free nonstationary cavity is predicted. Two excitation mechanisms are considered, both different from the trivial absorption of photons created due to the nonstationary Casimir effect. The first one is based on the fact that the photon states appear simultaneously with atomic excitation if the characteristic time of cavity nonstationarity is of the same order as the atomic transition time. The second one is associated with the “shake-up” effect caused by the modulation of the atomic ground-state Lamb shift upon a fast change in the cavity parameters. The presence of an atom in the nonstationary cavity affects the photon creation process. In particular, it changes the average number of generated photons and removes the constraint (inherent in the nonstationary Casimir effect) that only an even number of photons can be created. In addition, a new mechanism of photon generation associated with the shake-up effect appears.
The dynamical Casimir effect (DCE) predicts the generation of photons from the vacuum due to the parametric amplification of the quantum fluctuations of an electromagnetic field. The verification of such an effect is still elusive in optical systems due to the very demanding requirements of its experimental implementation. We show that an ensemble of two-level atoms collectively coupled to the electromagnetic field of a cavity, driven at low frequencies and close to a quantum phase transition, stimulates the production of photons from the vacuum. This paves the way to an effective simulation of the DCE through a mechanism that has recently found experimental demonstration. The spectral properties of the emitted radiation reflect the critical nature of the system and allow us to link the detection of the DCE to the Kibble-Zurek mechanism for the production of defects when crossing a continuous phase transition.
We study theoretically the non-stationary circuit QED system in which the artificial atom transition frequency has a small periodic modulation in time, prescribed externally. We show that, in the dispersive regime, when the modulation periodicity meets the `resonances', the dynamics may be described by the dynamical Casimir effect, Jaynes-Cummings or Anti-Jaynes-Cummings effective Hamiltonians. In the resonant atom-cavity regime, under the modulation `resonance' the dynamics resembles the behavior of the dynamical Casimir effect in a vibrating cavity containing a resonant two-level atom, and entangled states with two photons can be created from vacuum. Thus, an analog of the dynamical Casimir effect may be simulated in circuit QED, and several photons, as well as entangled states, can be generated from vacuum due to the anti-rotating term in the Rabi Hamiltonian.