Just at the beginning of quantum stochastic calculus Hudson and Parthasarathy proposed a quantum stochastic Schrodinger equation linked to dilations of quantum dynamical semigroups. Such an equation has found applications in physics, mainly in quantum optics, but not in its full generality. It has been used to give, at least approximately, the dynamics of photoemissive sources such as an atom absorbing and emitting light or matter in an optical cavity, which exchanges light with the surrounding free space. But in these cases the possibility of introducing the gauge (or number) process in the dynamical equation has not been considered. In this paper we show, in the case of the simplest photoemissive source, namely a two-level atom stimulated by a laser, how the full Hudson-Parthasarathy equation allows to describe in a consistent way not only absorption and emission, but also the elastic scattering of the light by the atom. Morever, we study the differential and total cross sections for the scattering of laser light by the atom, as a function of the frequency of the stimulating laser. The resulting line-shape is very interesting. Not only a Lorentzian shape is permitted, but the full variety of Fano profiles can be obtained. The dependence of the line shape on the intensity of the stimulating laser is computed; in particular, the resonance position turns out to be intensity dependent, a phenomenon known as lamp shift.
Just at the beginning of quantum stochastic calculus Hudson and Parthasarathy proposed a quantum stochastic Schrodinger equation linked to dilations of quantum dynamical semigroups. Such an equation has found applications in physics, mainly in quantum optics, but not in its full generality. It has been used to give, at least approximately, the dynamics of photoemissive sources such as an atom absorbing and emitting light or matter in an optical cavity, which exchanges light with the surrounding free space. But in these cases the possibility of introducing the gauge (or number) process in the dynamical equation has not been considered. In this paper we show, in the case of the simplest photoemissive source, namely a two-level atom stimulated by a laser, how the full Hudson-Parthasarathy equation allows to describe in a consistent way not only absorption and emission, but also the elastic scattering of the light by the atom. Morever, we study the differential and total cross sections for the scattering of laser light by the atom, as a function of the frequency of the stimulating laser. The resulting line-shape is very interesting. Not only a Lorentzian shape is permitted, but the full variety of Fano profiles can be obtained. The dependence of the line shape on the intensity of the stimulating laser is computed; in particular, the resonance position turns out to be intensity dependent, a phenomenon known as lamp shift.
Quantum stochastic differential equations have been used to describe the dynamics of an atom interacting with the electromagnetic field via absorption/emission processes. Here, by using the full quantum stochastic Schrödinger equation proposed by Hudson and Parthasarathy, we show that such models can be generalized to include other processes into the interaction. In the case of a two-level atom we construct a model on the basis of some physical requirements, the main being a balance equation on the fluxes of the ingoing and outgoing photons; in this model the atom-field interaction turns out to be due either to absorption/emission processes either to direct scattering processes, which simulate the interaction due to virtual transitions to the levels which have been eliminated from the description. To see the effects of the new terms, we consider both direct and heterodyne detection of the fluorescence light emitted by an atom stimulated by a monochromatic coherent laser and we deduce from these two detection schemes the expressions of the total, elastic and inelastic electromagnetic cross sections and the spectral distribution of the fluorescence light. The total cross section, as a function of the frequency of the stimulating laser, can present not only a Lorentzian shape, but the full variety of Fano profiles; intensity dependent widths and shifts are obtained. The fluorescence spectrum can present complicated shapes, according to the values of the various parameters; when the direct scattering is not important the usual symmetric triplet structure of the Mollow spectrum appears (for high intensity of the stimulating laser), while a strong contribution of the direct scattering process can distort such a triplet structure or can even make it to disappear.
By means of quantum stochastic calculus we construct a model for an atom with two degenerate levels which is stimulated by a circularly polarized laser and we compute its fluorescence spectrum. Let us stress that, once the model for the unitary atom–field dynamics has been given, then the spectrum is computed without further approximations. If only the absorption/emission term is included in the interaction, we reobtain the Mollow spectrum in the case of a monochromatic laser and the Kimble–Mandel spectrum in the case of a ‘phase diffusion model’ for a non-monochromatic laser. However, our model can also describe another type of light scattering, a ‘direct scattering’ due to the response of the atom as a whole, which we expect to be small but which interferes with the scattering due to the absorption/emission channel. When both the scattering channels are introduced we obtain a modification of the Mollow–Kimble–Mandel spectrum, which shares its main features with the usual case, but which presents some asymmetries even in the case of no detuning.
Quite a few researchers have contributed to the development of quantum stochastic differential equations driven by quantum noises, initiated by Hudson and Parthasarathy [HP84a]. A nonexhaustive list of contributors includes Fagnola and Wills [FW00], [FW03], Obata [Oba97], and Linsay and Skalski [LS10]. Based on the results presented in Chapter 3, this chapter derives and considers a general form of linear (left) and (right) Hudson-Parthasarathy quantum stochastic differential equations driven by quantum noises in symmetric Fock space with operator-valued matrices as coefficients. Specifically, it studies the existence and uniqueness of the strong and mild solution processes for both the left and right quantum stochastic differential equations and conditions under which the solution processes are unitary, isometry, co-isometry, and regular. These results make extensive use of the properties of stochastic integral driven by quantum noise and its quantum stochastic calculus in the context of a symmetric Fock space, which was explored in Chapter 3. Various discrete approximation schemes, including Bouten et al. [BvH07], of the left Hudson-Parthasarathy QSDE are also explored for numerical computation. Specifically, it is shown that the solution of the Hudson- Parthasarathy QSDE can be approximated by a sequence of discrete interaction models with decreasing time step. In order to study this problem, discrete interaction models are embedded in a limiting space. This allows one to present strong convergence of the embedded discrete cocycles to the solution of the Hudson-Parthasarathy QSDE. It will be pointed out that the way in which the embedding is done does not affect the proof of the main result for discrete approximations. Examples of a QSDE that is analytically solvable and a QSDE that possesses a mild solution but not a strong solution are also given. QSDE of Hudson-Parthasarathy Type It has been mentioned earlier in Chapter 3 that an open quantum systems treated in this monograph are to be formulated as a quantum system in which the underlined (or the initial) quantum system is perturbed by quantum noises that represent the environment.
We study the Maxwell–Bloch model, which describes the propagation of a laser through a material and the associated interaction between laser and matter (polarization of the atoms through light propagation, photon emission and absorption, etc.). The laser field is described through Maxwell's equations, a classical equation, while matter is represented at a quantum level and satisfies a quantum Liouville equation known as the Bloch model. Coupling between laser and matter is described through a quadratic source term in both equations. The model also takes into account partial relaxation effects, namely the trend of matter to return to its natural thermodynamic equilibrium. The whole system involves 6 + N(N + 1)/2 unknowns, the six-dimensional electromagnetic field plus the N(N + 1)/2 unknowns describing the state of matter, where N is the number of atomic energy levels of the considered material. We consider at once a high frequency and weak coupling situation, in the general case of anisotropic electromagnetic fields that are subject to diffraction. Degenerate energy levels are allowed. The whole system is stiff and involves strong nonlinearities. We show the convergence to a nonstiff, nonlinear, coupled Schrödinger-rate model, involving 3 + N unknowns. The electromagnetic field is eventually described through its envelope, one unknown vector in ℂ3. It satisfies a Schrödinger equation that takes into account propagation and diffraction of light inside the material. Matter on the other hand is described through a N-dimensional vector describing the occupation numbers of each atomic level. It satisfies Einstein's rate equation that describes the jumps of the electrons between the various atomic energy levels, as induced by the interaction with light. The rate of exchange between the atomic levels is proportional to the intensity of the laser field. The whole system is the physically natural nonlinear model. In order to provide an important and explicit example, we completely analyze the specific (two-dimensional) Transverse Magnetic case, for which formulae turn out to be simpler. Technically speaking, our analysis does not enter the usual mathematical framework of geometric optics: it is more singular, and requires an ad hoc Ansatz.
We obtain an explicit solution for the stationary state populations of a dissipative Fano model, where a discrete excited state is coupled to a continumm set of states; both excited set of states are reachable by photo-excitation from the ground state. The dissipative dynamic is described by a Liouville equation in Lindblad form and the field intensity can take arbitrary values. We show that the continuum states population as a function of laser frequency can always be expressed as a Fano profile plus a Lorentzian function with effective parameters whose explicit expressions are given in the case of a closed system coupled to a bath as well as for the original Fano scattering framework. Although the solution is intricate, it can be elegantly expressed as a linear transformation of the kernel of a 4 × 4 matrix which has the meaning of an effective Liouvillian. We unveil key notable processes related to the optical nonlinearity and which had not been reported to date: electromagnetic induced-transparency, population inversions, power narrowing and broadening, as well as an effective reduction of the Fano asymmetry parameter. The original Fano model was introduced by U. Fano in 1961 [1] to explain the asymmetric profile that was obtained when monitoring the photo-current as a function of the laser frequency used to ionize a gaz of Helium-like atoms. In parallel, Friederichs [2] developed the mathematical formalism to describe the essential feature of the Fano model: a discrete state coupled to a continuum set of states; both sets of states being reachable by photo-excitation from the ground state. The resulting photo-current, which is proportional to the population of the continuum set of states, as a function of the excitation laser frequency ω L is known as the Beutler-Fano or Fano profile: f (q) = (q + 2 /(2 + 1), where q is the ratio of the transition dipole moment of the ground-discrete and ground-continuum transitions, and = (ω L − ω e)/γ where e is the energy of the discrete state relative to the ground state, ω L is te radiation field frequency, and = nπV 2 is the linewidth of the excited state, induced by its coupling (per unit of energy) nV 2 to the continuum set of states, n being the density of states. Two extensions of the original model have been considered: inclusion of incoherent relaxation and dephasing processes and high field intensities. The motivation to include incoherent processes was first to describe the pressure broadening [3] due to elastic collisions, laser phase fluctuations [4] and spontaneous emission [5, 6]. Nowadays , Fano profiles in nanoscale structures are standard [7, 8], for example in plasmonic nanostructures [9–11], quantum dots, decorated nanoparticles [12] and spin filters [13]. The coherent coupling with the incident light induces large Rabi frequencies which in turn compete with the relaxation rates in order to modify the stationary state. The ability to predict the lineshape, and in general to investigate non linear optical phenomena in
Modeling lasers may be realized with different levels of sophistication. Rigorously it requires a full quantum treatment but many laser dynamical properties may be captured by semiclassical or even purely classical approaches. In this book we deliberately chose the simplest point of view, i.e. purely classical equations, and try to extract analytically as much information as possible. The basic framework of our approach is provided by the rate equations . In their simplest version, they apply to an idealized active system consisting of only two energy levels coupled to a reservoir. They were introduced as soon as the laser was discovered to explain (regular or irregular, damped or undamped) intensity spikes commonly seen with solid state lasers (for a historical review, see the introduction in). These rate equations are discussed and sometimes derived from a semiclassical theory in textbooks on lasers. They capture the essential features of the response of a single-mode laser and they may be modified to account for specific effects such as the modulation of a parameter or optical feedback. The most basic processes involved in laser operation are schematically represented in Figure 1.1. N 1 and N 2 denote the number of atoms in the ground and excited levels, respectively. The process of light–matter interaction is restricted to stimulated emission and absorption.