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Physica Scripta

Quantum electrodynamics in absorbing nonlinear media

J. A. Crosse, Stefan Scheel

Published Sep 1, 2010• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

An effective Hamiltonian for the second-order nonlinear process of parametric downconversion in the presence of absorption is derived. The electromagnetic field is quantized using the Green function method. Heisenberg's equations of motion for the interaction of a single atom with a driving electric field are then solved to second order in perturbation theory in the rotating-wave approximation. The real-cavity model is used to embed the interacting atom in a bulk medium and correct for local field effects of the material. The resulting Hamiltonian is found to be trilinear in the electric and noise polarization fields and reduces to the phenomenological nonlinear Hamiltonian for the cases where absorption vanishes.

DOI
10.1088/0031-8949/2010/t140/014041

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An effective Hamiltonian for the second-order nonlinear process of parametric downconversion in the presence of absorption is derived. The electromagnetic field is quantized using the Green function method. Heisenberg's equations of motion for the interaction of a single atom with a driving electric field are then solved to second order in perturbation theory in the rotating-wave approximation. The real-cavity model is used to embed the interacting atom in a bulk medium and correct for local field effects of the material. The resulting Hamiltonian is found to be trilinear in the electric and noise polarization fields and reduces to the phenomenological nonlinear Hamiltonian for the cases where absorption vanishes.
We derive an effective Hamiltonian for the nonlinear process of parametric downconversion in the presence of absorption. Based upon the Green-function method for quantizing the electromagnetic field, we first set up Heisenberg's equations of motion for a single atom driven by an external electric field and in the presence of an absorbing dielectric material. The equations of motion are then solved to second order in perturbation theory which, in rotating-wave approximation, yields the standard effective interaction Hamiltonian known from free-space nonlinear optics. In a second step, we derive the local-field-corrected Hamiltonian for an atom embedded in a dielectric host medium, that is, a nonlinear crystal. Here we show that the resulting effective Hamiltonian is found to be trilinear in the electric and noise-polarization fields and is thus capable of describing nonlinear noise processes. Furthermore, it reduces to the phenomenological nonlinear Hamiltonian for the cases where absorption, and hence the noise-polarization field, vanishes.
A study of the effects of absorption on the nonlinear process of parametric down-conversion is presented. Absorption within the nonlinear medium is accounted for by employing the framework of macroscopic QED and the Green tensor quantization of the electromagnetic field. An effective interaction Hamiltonian, which describes the nonlinear interaction of the electric field and the linear noise polarization field, is used to derive the quantum state of the light leaving a nonlinear crystal. The signal and idler modes of this quantum state are found to be a superposition of the electric and noise polarization fields. Using this state, the expression for the coincident count rates for both type-I and type-II down-conversion are found. The nonlinear interaction with the noise polarization field was shown to cause an increase in the rate on the order of ${10}^{\ensuremath{-}12}$ for absorption of 10% per centimeter. This astonishingly small effect is found to be negligible compared to the decay caused by linear absorption of the propagating modes. From the expressions for the biphoton amplitude, it can be seen that the maximally entangled states can still be produced even in the presence of strong absorption.
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.
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.
A simple approach is proposed for the quantization of the electromagnetic field in nonlinear and inhomogeneous media. Given the dielectric function and nonlinear susceptibilities, the Hamiltonian of the electromagnetic field is determined completely by this quantization method. From Heisenberg's equations we derive Maxwell's equations for the field operators. When the nonlinearity goes to zero, this quantization method returns to the generalized canonical quantization procedure for linear inhomogeneous media [Phys. Rev. A 43, 467 (1991)]. The explicit Hamiltonians for the second-order and third-order nonlinear quasi-steady-state processes are obtained based on this quantization procedure.
The theory of quantum effects in nonlinear dielectric media is developed. The nonlinear dielectric media is influenced by an external pumping field. The diagonalization of the Hamiltonian of a quantized field is obtained by the canonical Bogoliubov transformations. The transformations allow us to obtain the general expressions for the number of created photons and for the degree of squeezing. In the case of a plane pumping wave, for example, the results are calculated by using the zero order of the secular perturbation theory, with small parameters characterizing the medium nonlinearity. The Heisenberg equations of motion are obtained for non-stationary case and a commonly used Hamiltonian is derived from the first principles of quantum electrodynamics.