We present a perturbative analysis of a Rabi model where the coupling between the quantized single-mode electromagnetic field and the two-level atom depends on the field intensity. Upon modeling the matter–radiation coupling through the Holstein–Primakoff realization of algebra su(1,1), we evaluate first- and second-order eigenenergies and eigenstates both in the weak-coupling regime (atom transition frequency smaller than the coupling strength) and in the strong-coupling regime. In the first case, among various effects, we observe a quadratic dependence on the photon number of energy eigenvalues and the possible formation of level doublets. In the strong-coupling case, the perturbative analysis becomes considerably complex due to the su(1,1)-valued form of the unperturbed Hamiltonian. The critical condition for the transition to an almost continuous spectrum is found in terms of the model parameters.
Abstract We apply a simple analytical method based on a unitary transformation to calculate the ground state, its excitation spectrum and quantum dynamic evolution of physical quantities for the double-photon quantum Rabi Hamiltonian over the wide coupling-strength range. The concise analytical method possesses the same mathematical simplicity as the approach of the rotating wave approximation (RWA). By quantitative comparison with the numerically exact result obtained by matrix diagonalization, we confirm that our calculated results obtained by transformed rotating-wave method are not only accurate in the weak coupling regime but also correct in intermediate strong-coupling case. In the intermediate ultrastrong-coupling regime, the calculated values of the ground state and lower lying excited states are nearly the same as the exact ones. It turns out that our calculation for the energy spectrum is beyond the ordinary-RWA. Meanwhile, we demonstrate the signatures resulting from the counter-rotating wave terms by monitoring the population, the coherence, the squeezing of the photon under the ultra-strong conditions. In particular, we find that when the frequency of the photon is much larger than the transition frequency of the system, the lineshape of the time evolution becomes complicated with the increase of the coupling strength, which may be verified experimentally.
We study the two-qubit Rabi model in the most general case where the qubits are different from each other. The spectrum of the system in the ultrastrong-coupling regime is shown to converge to two forced oscillator chains by perturbation theory. An even and odd decomposition of the Hilbert space allows us to calculate the spectra in any given parameter regime; the cases studied confirm our perturbation theory prediction in the ultrastrong-coupling regime and point to crossings in the spectra within each parity subspace in the moderate-coupling regime. The normal modes of the system are calculated by two different methods, the first a linear algebra approach via the parity bases that delivers a four-term recurrence relation for the amplitudes of the proper states and, the second, via Bargmann representation for the field that delivers five-term recurrence relations. Finally, we show some examples of the time evolution of the mean photon number, population inversion, von Neuman entropy and Wootters concurrence under the two-qubit quantum Rabi Hamiltonian by taking advantage of the parity decomposition.
We compare the semiclassical and quantum predictions for the unitary dynamics of a two-level atom interacting with a single-mode electromagnetic field under parametric modulation of the atomic parameters in the regime of multiphoton atom–field resonances. We derive approximate analytic solutions for the semiclassical Rabi model when the atomic transition frequency and the atom–field coupling strength undergo harmonic external modulations. These solutions are compared to the predictions of the quantum Rabi model, which we solve numerically for an initial coherent state with a large average photon number (on the order of 104), in the regime of three-photon resonance. We show that, for short enough times and sufficiently intense coherent states, the semiclassical dynamics agrees quite well with the quantum dynamics, although it inevitably fails at longer times due to the absence of collapse–revival behavior. Furthermore, we describe how the field state evolves throughout the interaction, presenting numerical results for the average photon number, entropies (related to atom–field entanglement), and other quantities characterizing the photon number statistics of the electromagnetic field.
Within the Rabi quantum model, it has been shown theoretically that a two-level atom ultrastrongly coupled to an electromagnetic field generates or absorbs photons. Photons can be generated if the field is initially in the vacuum state. Under certain initial states of the atom + field system, the absorption of photons is possible in the field mode in the ultrastrong atom–field coupling regime. If the atom is initially in the ground (unexcited) state and the field is in the vacuum state, photons can be generated under resonance condition ωa ≈ ωf or ξ ≡ ωa/ωf ≈ 1, where ωa and ωf are the atomic transition and field frequencies, respectively, in the ultrastrong coupling regime. At the negative detuning when ξ
≪ 1 or ωa
≪ ωf, Rabi oscillations of the average number of photons
⟨n^⟩t with
0⩽⟨n^⟩t⩽nmax≫1 are observed in the case of the ultrastrong coupling with the atom–field coupling constant
g~≡|g|/ωf∼1 ; in this case, the population of the excited atomic state is Pe(t) ≈ 0.5. At a large positive detuning when ξ
≫ 1, photons are not generated, i.e.,
⟨n^⟩≈0 , and the atom remains in the initial state, i.e., Pe(t) ≈ 0. The statistics of photons in the generation regime is nearly chaotic: the variance of photons is much larger than the level of the coherent field state (i.e., is super-Poisson). Field photons are absorbed without the excitation of the atom in the ultrastrong coupling regime in the case of the coherent initial state of the field
(⟨n^(t=0⟩>0) for certain positive detuning values. In this case, the field becomes sub-Poisson.
Resonant two-photon absorption is discussed for the case in which the exciting field may be intense enough and near enough to resonance to cause appreciable saturation. A single pair of levels in an otherwise quite general atom is assumed to satisfy the appropriate resonance condition, and equations are derived governing the time evolution of the associated 2 \ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{} 2 submatrix of the full atomic density matrix. Atomic relaxation is treated explicitly. The analysis, which treats both inversion-symmetric and inversion-nonsymmetric cases within the same general formalism, is developed systematically, the necessary approximations receiving careful discussion. The results are analogous to those for the corresponding one-photon process, but with a shift in the resonance frequency proportional to the intensity of the exciting field. This frequency shift is not identical to the one calculated by time-independent (second-order) perturbation theory, and becomes large when the energy of an intermediate state of the atom approaches the mean of the energies of the active states.