Annual Meeting Optical Society of America
Field–atom dynamics of the Jaynes-Cummings model for large initial fields
Julio R. Gea-Banacloche
Abstract
For large initial fields, the evolution of the Jaynes-Cummings model is shown to simplify considerably. For two special initial atomic states (the eigenstates of the semiclassical problem) one finds a disentangled, quasipure-state evolution for both the field and atom. For an arbitrary initial atomic state the evolution is a linear super-imposition of these two privileged alternative paths. New results include the fact that the state of the atom at half-revival time is pure and independent of the initial state (nonunitary evolution), and that the state of the field at that time is a coherent super-imposition of macroscopically distinct states (Schrodinger cat).