Quantum Theory of Atom-Field Interaction in a Resonant Optical Cavity.

Xiaoqiang Xu, You‐Quan Li

Abstract We consider Feshbach resonance in an optical cavity where photons interact with atoms and molecules dispersively. From mean-field theory we obtain multiple fixed-point solutions, which is strongly related to the phenomenon of bistability. Adiabatic evolutions demonstrate hysteretic behaviors by varying pump-cavity detuning from opposite directions. We also use the quantum model to check mean-field results which match perfectly. The analysis here may enrich the study of particle-photon interaction systems.

Sun-Hyun Youn, Young-Tak Chough, Kyoungwon An

Christopher P. Search, J. Mauricio Campuzano, Marko Zivkovic

We explore the quantum dynamics of photoassociation of Bose-Einstein condensed atoms into molecules using an optical cavity field. Inside of an optical resonator, photoassociation of quantum degenerate atoms involves the interaction of three coupled quantum fields for the atoms, molecules, and the photons. The feedback created by a high-$Q$ optical cavity causes the cavity field to become a dynamical quantity whose behavior is linked in a nonlinear manner to the atoms inside and where vacuum fluctuations have a more important role than in free space. We develop and compare several methods for calculating the dynamics of the atom-molecule conversion process with a coherently driven cavity field. We first present an alternate operator representation for the Hamiltonian from which we derive an improved form of mean field theory and an approximate solution of the Heisenberg-Langevin (HL) equations that properly accounts for quantum noise in the cavity field. It is shown that our improved mean field theory corrects several deficiencies in traditional mean field theory based on expectation values of annihilation and creation operators. Also, we show by direct comparison to numerical solutions of the density matrix equations that our approximate quantum solution of HL equations gives an accurate description of weakly or undriven cavities where mean field theories break down.

R. K. Colegrave, Ursula A.T. Ramjit

Gerhard Rempe, Robert J. Thompson, Harry J. Kimble

Roberto Stassi, Salvatore Savasta, Luigi Garziano +2 more

We study the squeezing of output quadratures of an electro-magnetic field escaping from a resonator coupled to a general quantum system with arbitrary interaction strengths. The generalized theoretical analysis of output squeezing proposed here is valid for all the interaction regimes of cavity-quantum electrodynamics: from the weak to the strong, ultrastrong, and deep coupling regimes. For coupling rates comparable or larger then the cavity resonance frequency, the standard input–output theory for optical cavities fails to calculate the variance of output field-quadratures and predicts a non-negligible amount of output squeezing, even if the system is in its ground state. Here we show that, for arbitrary interaction strength and for general cavity-embedded quantum systems, no squeezing can be found in the output-field quadratures if the system is in its ground state. We also apply the proposed theoretical approach to study the output squeezing produced by: (i) an artificial two-level atom embedded in a coherently-excited cavity; and (ii) a cascade-type three-level system interacting with a cavity field mode. In the latter case the output squeezing arises from the virtual photons of the atom-cavity dressed states. This work extends the possibility of predicting and analyzing the results of continuous-variable optical quantum-state tomography when optical resonators interact very strongly with other quantum systems.