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arXiv:quant-ph/9812001

Numerical simulations of fundamental processes in cavity QED: Atomic decay

Vladimír Bužek, G. Drobný, Min Gyu Kim, Martti Havukainen, P. L. Knight

Published Dec 1, 1998• 1 citation
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We present results of numerical investigation of a microscopic dynamics of a two-level atom embedded into a ``linear crystal'' of other two-level atoms. These additional atoms play a role of a material media. All atoms interact with a multimode cavity field. We study how the decay of the initially excited atom is affected by the presence of material media and spectral properties of the cavity field.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.quant-ph/9812001

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•May 21, 1990•0 citations
We present results of numerical investigation of a microscopic dynamics of a two-level atom embedded into a ``linear crystal'' of other two-level atoms. These additional atoms play a role of a material media. All atoms interact with a multimode cavity field. We study how the decay of the initially excited atom is affected by the presence of material media and spectral properties of the cavity field.
Starting from first principles we simulate numerically the dynamics of a system of two-level atoms interacting with a multimode electromagnetic field in a one-dimensional cavity. In particular, we investigate the spontaneous emission of an excited two-level atom in the cavity. We show how the decay depends on the mode spectrum and on the position of the atom in the cavity. We study how the spontaneous emission is modified when the initially excited atom is surrounded by a material medium modeled as a system of two-level atoms. We also study the propagation of photon wave packets emitted by the atom within the material media. Our microscopic model provides us with a deeper understanding of the atom-field interaction and offers us a framework for a systematic investigation of the transition from a microscopic to a macroscopic (phenomenological) description of the spontaneous decay in material media (e.g., dielectrics).
Within the framework of a two-dimensional microscopic, purely quantum mechanical model, we analyse the dynamics of single-photon wave packets interacting with optical elements (beam splitters, mirrors), modelled as systems of two-level atoms. That is, we utilize a two-dimensional cavity to simulate the quantum behaviour of simple optical components and networks made thereof. The field is quantized using the canonical procedure, and only the basis states with one unit of excitation are included. This, however, covers linear optical phenomena. The field is taken to interact with localized atoms through a dipole interaction. Using different configurations of atoms, and choosing their frequencies to be resonant or off-resonance, we can model mirrors, beam splitters, focusing devices and multicomponent systems. Thus we can model arbitrary linear networks of optical components. We show the time evolution of a photon wave packet in an interferometer as an example. As the state of the field is known at each instant, spectral properties and spatial coherence can immediately be obtained from the simulations. We also know the states of the two-level atoms constituting the components, which allows us to consider their quantum behaviour. Here the decay of an excited atom into the vacuum state of the electromagnetic field in the two-dimensional cavity is studied.
We study analytically and numerically the dynamical Casimir effect in a cavity containing two stationary two-level atoms that interact with the resonance field mode via the Tavis-Cummings Hamiltonian. We determine the modulation frequencies for which the field and atomic excitations are generated and study the corresponding dynamical behaviors in the absence of damping. It is shown that the two-atom setup allows for monitoring of photon generation without interrupting the growth, and different entangled states can be generated during the process.
In this paper I study the dynamics of a two-level atom interacting with a standing-wave field. When the atom is subjected to a weak linear force, the problem can be turned into a time-dependent one, and the evolution is understood from the band structure of the spectrum. The presence of level crossings in the spectrum gives rise to Bloch oscillations of the atomic motion. Here I investigate the effects of the atom-field detuning parameter. A variety of different level crossings are obtained by changing the magnitude of the detuning, and the behavior of the atomic motion is strongly affected due to this. I also consider the situation in which the detuning is oscillating in time, and its impact on the atomic motion. Wave-packet simulations of the full problem are treated numerically and the results are compared with analytical solutions given by the standard Landau-Zener and the three-level Landau-Zener models.
Over the past ten years, our group has investigated the effects of confinement on atoms inside metallic micron–sized cavities in order to elucidate some basic phenomena in the field of cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED). The first of these was the inhibition of spontaneous emission from an atom inside a cavity. This was followed by a laser spectroscopic measurement of the van der Waals interaction between a single Rydberg atom and a gold cavity, which showed that a simple electrostatic model of the atom–cavity interaction is correct when the cavity is small enough. More recently, the retarded Casimir–Polder force was measured between a ground state sodium atom and a large cavity, demonstrating that the van der Waals potential fails at long enough range and that the vacuum fluctuations of the field then have an important role in the interaction of the atom with the cavity. Our group is now pushing forward these investigations to study cavities whose walls have losses and dispersion, where the theory of cavity QED is significantly more complicated. With real surfaces, we have to deal with the complex dielectric response ε(ω) of the material, which exhibits frequency–dependent absorption and dispersion. One particularly interesting case is when a downward transition in the atom is resonant with an excitation of the cavity walls. This opens a new branch for the atomic decay: as an alternative to creating a photon within the space surrounded by the cavity walls the atomic decay can now create an electromagnetic excitation of the walls themselves. Another novel feature of our experiments is that the Bohr frequencies of the atom are close to the kT/h, where T is room temperature. We therefore expect to be able to measure effects associated with QED at finite temperature; in other words, to study how the blackbody radiation affects our experiments. By conducting experiments with real surfaces, we hope to elucidate and perhaps simplify the theoretical models used to describe these systems.
Recently, there has been great experimental interest in studying the behavior of active atoms embedded in a dielectric medium because of the possibility of manipulating the spontaneous decay rate of these atoms.1 More important, the decay rate of such atoms warrants special study as it is affected by additional physical factors not present in cavity QED. We show that the usual value given for one of these additional factors is incorrect, and the correct value can be related to a basic property of the standard QED Hamiltonian.