Semiclassical description of n-level systems interacting with radiation fields

G. A. Raggio

G. A. Raggio, H.S. Zivi

It is shown that the dynamics of an N-level quantum system driven by a classical radiation field can be derived rigorously from an associated fully quantum-mechanical model with the help of an asymptotic limit. By formally expanding the full quantum dynamics around the semiclassical limit, quantum corrections to the semiclassical description are systematically constructed. The observables describing these corrections are shown to exist in any order, and explicit expressions for their time dependence are given.

Marlan O. Scully, Muhammad Suhail Zubairy

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.

‎Louis Marchildon

Wolfgang Ernst Friederich Pauli

Karl F. Freed, A. A. Villaeys

We consider the description of the quantum dynamics of a two-level system interacting with a single Glauber coherent mode of the radiation field. An exact solution (within the rotating wave and electric dipole approximations) is provided for both the time-independent and time-dependent Green’s functions for the coupled matter–radiation system. The atom (molecular) transition probabilities are shown to be Poisson averages of the corresponding semiclassical problem when the latter is likewise treated in the rotating wave approximation. At low radiation intensities, the quantum and semiclassical results differ, but at high intensities, they become the same when the average photon number n0 in the field satisfies the condition n01/2≫1. A similar behavior is displayed for the expectation value of the electric field of the coherent mode in the presence of the atom. The spectrum of the radiation, resonantly scattered by the atom, is shown to coincide with the results of Mollow.