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Physical Review Research

Unveiling and veiling an entangled light-matter quantum state from the vacuum

Roberto Stassi, Mauro Cirio, Ken Funo, Jorge Puebla, Neill Lambert, Franco Nori

Published Oct 27, 2023• 5 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The ground state of an atom interacting with the electromagnetic field in the ultrastrong coupling regime is composed of virtual photons entangled with the atom. We propose a method to promote to real the entire photonic state, while preserving the entanglement with the atom. The process can be reversed, and the entangled state can be restored in the vacuum. We consider a four-level atom, with two of these levels ultrastrongly coupled to a cavity mode. The process is obtained by making use of either an ideal ultrafast pulse or a more realistic multitone $\ensuremath{\pi}$ pulse that drives only the atom. An experimental realization of this proposal will not only enable the investigation of the exotic phenomena of emission of particles from the vacuum, but will also prove that quantum superposition states can be extracted from the vacuum. Moreover, it will allow one to inspect the ground state in the ultrastrong coupling regime, and to generate on-demand entangled states for quantum information processing.

DOI
10.1103/physrevresearch.5.043095

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The ground state of an atom interacting with the electromagnetic field in the ultrastrong coupling regime is composed of virtual photons entangled with the atom. We propose a method to promote to real the entire photonic state, while preserving the entanglement with the atom. The process can be reversed, and the entangled state can be restored in the vacuum. We consider a four-level atom, with two of these levels ultrastrongly coupled to a cavity mode. The process is obtained by making use of either an ideal ultrafast pulse or a more realistic multitone \ensuremathπ\ensuremath{\pi}\ensuremathπ pulse that drives only the atom. An experimental realization of this proposal will not only enable the investigation of the exotic phenomena of emission of particles from the vacuum, but will also prove that quantum superposition states can be extracted from the vacuum. Moreover, it will allow one to inspect the ground state in the ultrastrong coupling regime, and to generate on-demand entangled states for quantum information processing.
Deep in the ultrastrong light-matter coupling regime, it has been predicted that the ground state of a two-level atom interacting with a cavity mode takes the form of a "virtual" Schrödinger cat entangled state between light and matter. We propose a method to convert this Schrödinger cat state from virtual to real, and back again, by driving the atom with optimally chosen pulses. Our system consists of a four-level atom, with two of these levels ultrastrongly coupled to a cavity mode. We show that the Schrödinger cat state can be converted between virtual and real by making use of either an ideal ultrafast pulse or a multi-tone π-pulse. In addition to allowing us to observe these unusual virtual states this method could also be used to generate entangled cat states on demand for quantum information processing.
We present an interaction scheme that exhibits a dynamical effect of virtual photons carried by a vacuum-field dressed two-level atom in the ultrastrong-coupling regime. We show that, with the aid of an external driving field, virtual photons provide a transition matrix element that enables the atom to evolve coherently and reversibly to an auxiliary level accompanied by the emission of a real photon. The process corresponds to a type of vacuum Rabi oscillation, and we show that the effective vacuum Rabi frequency is proportional to the amplitude of a single virtual photon in the ground state. Therefore, the interaction scheme could serve as a probe of ground-state structures in the ultrastrong-coupling regime.
We investigate the generation of a strongly entangled electromagnetic field through laser pumping a collection of NNN two-level atoms in a two-mode optical resonator. The vacuum-multiparticle interactions enhance the coupling of the atomic sample to the cavity modes facilitating the creation of entangled photons at higher frequencies. In the dispersive atom-cavity limit, one can obtain a steady-state output field consisting of tens of such photons per mode.
We study theoretically the entanglement of two-photon states in the ground state of the intersubband cavity system, i.e., the so-called polariton vacuum. The system consists of a sequence of doped quantum wells located inside a microcavity and the photons can interact with intersubband excitations inside the quantum wells. Using an explicit solution for the ground state of the system, operated in the ultrastrong-coupling regime, a postselection is introduced, where only certain two-photon states are considered and analyzed for mode entanglement. We find that a fast quench of the coupling creates entangled photons and that the degree of entanglement depends on the absolute values of the in-plane wave vectors of the photons. Maximally entangled states can be generated by choosing the appropriate modes in the postselection.
We investigate the dynamics of a two-level atom flying through a photonic cavity when the light-matter interaction is in the ultrastrong coupling regime. We adopt a closed full quantum description that takes into account the quantization of the atom center-of-mass motion in addition to its internal degree of freedom and to the quantized photonic cavity field. We find that multiple qualitatively different dynamical regimes are achievable according to two key figures of merit: the ratio between the kinetic energy and the bare excitation energies, and the product of these bare energies with the time the atom takes to fly through the cavity. According to the values of those figures of merit, the atom can be reflected by the \emph{dressed} vacuum, or can convert part of its kinetic energy into real excitations which might be emitted out of the cavity. In the first case, the atom experiences a \emph{quantum regenerative braking} mechanism, based on temporary storage of energy into virtual excitations.
We present and analyze a method where parametric (two-photon) driving of a cavity is used to exponentially enhance the light-matter coupling in a generic cavity QED setup, with time-dependent control. Our method allows one to enhance weak-coupling systems, such that they enter the strong coupling regime (where the coupling exceeds dissipative rates) and even the ultrastrong coupling regime (where the coupling is comparable to the cavity frequency). As an example, we show how the scheme allows one to use a weak-coupling system to adiabatically prepare the highly entangled ground state of the ultrastrong coupling system. The resulting state could be used for remote entanglement applications.