Photon Absorption and Emission Statistics of a Two-Level Atom in a Cavity

Chang J. Lee Department of Nanochemistry, Division of Basic Sciences, Sun Moon University, Asan 336-708, Korea

Abstract
The absorption and emission of photons by an atom involves quantum jumps between states. We investigate the quantum jump statistics for the system of a two-level atom and a single-mode cavity eld. We use the Jaynes-Cummings model for this problem, and perform Monte Carlo numerical simulations and give a detailed exact analysis on these simulations. These studies reveal that the waiting-time distribution (WTD) for photon absorptions(emissions) has a unique novel statistics, and that the photon absorption(emission) rate is not uniform, but counter-intuitively depends on the position in the Rabi cycle. The eects of the nonclassical nature of the eld on the WTD is discussed.
PACS numbers: 42.50.Ar, 42.50.Lc, 42.50.Pq Keywords: quantum jump, photon statistics, absorption, emission, cavity quantum electrodynamics, JaynesCummings model

coolcjl@sunmoon.ac.kr

I.

INTRODUCTION

The experimental and theoretical progress made in the last few decades in atomic physics and quantum optics has enabled researchers to put fundamental quantum mechanical problems that have eluded concrete answers to the test. The absorption and emission of photons by matter is one of these fundamental problems. A canonical model for such processes in the optical and the microwave regimes is a two-level atom interacting with a monochromatic light. In the standard approach employing the time-dependent Schr odinger equation the probability for nding the atom in either state oscillatesa phenomena well-known as the Rabi oscillations [1]. The oscillations are often interpreted as a periodic change between upper and lower states of an atom by absorption and emission of photons [2]. However, the oscillations result from an average of processes taking place in an ensemble of similarly prepared atoms. As long as a single atom is concerned, discrete quantum jumps rather than the continuous, oscillatory absorptions or emissions take place [3]. In the standard wave mechanical treatments these quantum jumps are smeared out and cannot be discerned. An approach that is based on such individual quantum jumps and reproduces the same ensemble average as in the standard wave mechanics is the Monte Carlo Wave Function (MCWF) method [4]. The MCWF theories are mostly concerned with spontaneous emission. In a previous paper [5] we considered the Rabi problem without dissipation and incorporated quantum jumps into the evolution under the standard time-dependent Schr odinger equation. We devised a scheme that, while utilizing the concept of wavefunction collapse during repeated measurements, avoids the quantum Zeno eect [68]. This allowed us to obtain the photon counting statistics associated with the stimulated absorption and emission processes of the Rabi modelnot possible with the traditional wave mechanical approach. The photon counting did not show unique statistics, but varied depending upon the Rabi frequency. This left us to wonder under what conditions the statistics is unique, if there is. Another aspect not considered was the eects of detuning on the statistics. The goal of this paper is to present results of further investigation on the photon counting statistics for the cases of both on- and o-resonance excitations and give a detailed analysis to account for the statistics. We are particularly concerned with nding the conditions under which the statistics are uniquely determined. We recast the semiclassical Rabi problem into the Jaynes-Cummings model (JCM) [9]. The JCM is one of the most thoroughly stud2

ied quantum optics models, and has been extensively generalized. The novel phenomena of collapses and revivals of the Rabi oscillation [10] is a direct consequence of eld quantization. With the advancement of cavity quantum electrodynamics experiments the JCM has provided a fertile ground for testing fundamental aspects of quantum mechanics such as entanglement and has implications for quantum computing [11]. We will show in this paper that the original, nonextended JCM still has other novel phenomena. This paper is organized as follows: In section II we briey review the JCM and introduce physical parameters that will be used throughout this paper. Quantum jumps simulation of the evolution for the atom-eld coupled system will be given in section III. Photon counting statistics resulting from the simulation and a detailed analysis of the statistics are given in this section as well. The paper concludes in section IV with a summary of the main results, and discussions on some experimental aspects and on the eects of eld quantization in the photon absorption(emission) statistics.

II.

THE JCM

The system we consider consists of a two-level atom interacting resonantly or nearresonantly with a single quantized cavity mode. We assume the atom-cavity interaction is in the strong coupling regime, so the dissipative processes in both the atom and the cavity are ignored. Furthermore, we are concerned with the inner workings of the atom-eld interaction. Thus, the coupling of the eld with the outside measuring device [12] is not considered here. Such a system is described by the JCM Hamiltonian: 1 1 0 z + h a a + +h a+ + a , H= h 2 2 (1)

where 0 is the resonance frequency between the two atomic states. The lower and upper states of the atom are denoted as |0 and |1 , respectively [13]. z = |1 1| |0 0|, + = |1 0|, = |0 1|. is the cavity mode frequency, and a and a are the cavity eld annihilation and creation operators, respectively. The atom-eld coupling constant is assumed to be real. We consider the cavity is in the Fock state with the photon number m. Other eld states can be expressed in terms of these Fock states, so eects due to dierent eld states can be inferred from the Fock state properties and the photon distribution function. Since the 3

interaction of the atom with the light in Eq. (1) couples only |0, m + 1 state with |1, m state, the atom-eld system can be expressed as a coherent superposition state | (t) =
j =0,1

cj (t)|j, m j + 1 .

(2)

The evolution of the state is governed by the time-dependent Schr odinger equation i d | (t) = H | (t) . dt h (3)

There are several ways to solve Eqs. (1)-(3), and the results can be found elsewhere [15]. If initially the atom-cavity system is in the state |0, m + 1 , the probabilities for nding the system in the respective states at time t are given by

(m)2 e t , sin2 2 e 2 (m)2 e t P1 (t) = |c1 (t)|2 = , (4) sin2 2 e 2 where (m) = m + 1 is the m-photon Rabi frequency. (To simplify notations we will use instead of (m) in the remaining discussions.) e = 2 + 2 with = 0 being P0 (t) = |c0 (t)|2 = 1 the detuning. If the initial state is |1, m instead, one just needs to switch the labels 0 and 1 in Eq. (4). As it stands, the above results of wave mechanics show that the probability of being at either the lower or the upper state oscillates continuously. Measurements with an ensemble of atoms reproduce the oscillation. However, it does not give any information about when an individual atom makes a transition to the upper state, and vice versa.

III. A.

QUANTUM JUMPS SIMULATION AND ANALYSIS Rabi oscillation simulation

Photon counting involves measurements. Measurements make the wave function collapse, and we take Pj (t), (j = 0, 1) in Eq. (4) to be the probability for the collapse | (t) | (t) = |j, m j + 1 to occur. Here, C is the collapse operator and is none but the C atom-eld interaction term: = a+ or a . C 4 (5)

Since 1 + a a is a constant of motion, j + (m j + 1) = m + 1 is a conserved quantity. 2 z Thus, atomic and eld states are intimately entangled and we will suppress the eld state and concentrate only on the atomic evolution in the rest of the paper. In order to simulate measurements we divide the total observation time Tobs into small segments, each having t, such that Tobs = N t, (N >> 1) [16]. During each time segment the atom evolves according to the Schr odinger equation, and for each discrete time tn = nt, (n = 1, 2, 3, . . . , N ) a random number rn is generated. The collapse rule is that

| (tn ) + | (tn ) = |1 , P1 (tn ) rn , | (tn ) | (tn ) = |0 , P1 (tn ) < rn (6)

In the above, we suppressed the operators and the state labels of the eld. A complication of consecutive measurements is the quantum Zeno eect mentioned earlier. However, it may be evaded with the scheme proposed in [5]. In a nutshell, we consider an ensemble of similarly prepared atoms, make a measurement and register the state, one atom at a time: at t = t for the rst atom, at t = 2t for the second atom, and at t = 3t for the third atom, etc. Such a series of N measurements constitutes a single quantum trajectory (or measurement history). Since the atoms are prepared similarly, the trajectory may be looked upon as one of the many possible trajectories that a particular atom may follow. Thus, we may regard the measurement history as the quantum trajectory of an atom. An ensemble average of these quantum trajectories should coincide with the continuous evolution predicted by Eq. (4). In Fig. 1 we plot quantum trajectories with 1 and 105 atoms with the atom in the lower state initially. The parameters used in the simulations are: the Rabi frequency = 10002, = 0, the time increment t = 106 , and the number of time segments N = 2000. Here, both the frequency and time are in arbitrary units such that f requency time = 2 . Thus, these parameters give rise to two Rabi cycles as the gure shows. As expected, the quantum jumps appearing in the single-atom trajectory disappear and the Rabi oscillations become evident as the number of atoms in the simulation becomes large enough. The real beauty of this approach, however, is that it can give information on the statistics of waiting time for photon absorption and emission. 5

100000

50000
Quantum Trajectories

0 1

500

1000

1500

2000

500

1000
Time (measurements)

1500

2000

FIG. 1. Simulation of measurement histories with 1 and 105 atoms (from bottom to top). The single quantum trajectory shows discrete quantum jumps, while the oscillatory structure is evident when the number of trajectories is large.

B.

Waiting-time distribution(WTD) of photon absorption and emission

1.

Simulation of WTD

The atom absorbs a photon in the time interval (tn1 , tn ] when the measurement of the atomic state at t = tn1 shows that it is at the lower state and at t = tn it is at the upper state (and vice versa for photon emission). Then we can dene the waiting time of photon absorption as the time interval (expressed as a multiple of t) between two successive absorptions. The WTD of absorption is easily obtained by grouping into histogram bins the time intervals between two absorptions in the Rabi oscillation simulation. The WTD of photon emission can be obtained likewise. Figure 2 shows the simulated WTD of photon absorptions taking place over one Rabi cycle at exact resonance. The number of atoms in the simulation is 104 and N = 1000, but other parameters are kept the same as in section III A. The WTD of emission is almost the same as the one for absorption, and hence will not be discussed henceforth unless otherwise specied. We nd from the gure that the distribution is sharply peaked about 23 t, and the width of the distribution is approximately 5.5 t. 6

2x105
Number of Absorptions

2x105

1x105

1x105

200

400

600

800

1000

10

12

14

16

18

20

Waiting Time

FIG. 2. The waiting-time distribution of photon absorptions over one Rabi cycle with the atom excited resonantly. The horizontal axis is the waiting time in multiples of t. The inset shows the entire domain of waiting times, while the magnied view shows the waiting times up to 20.

The product of parameters N t determines the (fractional) number of Rabi cycles. For a given number of Rabi cycles, N t = 2q (q may be nonintegral), the distribution is uniquely given regardless of the magnitude of , if the number of measurements N is kept the same and large enough, say N = 1000, and if t is adjusted such that t = 2q/(N ). The variation of distributions for nonintegral multiples of the Rabi cycle has been reported in a previous paper [5]. The reason for the variation is due to unequal excitation probabilities at dierent positions in the Rabi cycle as will be discussed in section III B 2. When detuning is introduced, the distribution behaves dierently. As the detuning increases it becomes more dicult for the atom to make transitions to the upper level, so the waiting time for photon absorption gets longer and consequently the distribution draws out. Figure 3 demonstrates this behavior. For the simulation the detuning is increased by a factor of 2 from bottom to top, = 2k , (k = 0, 1, . . . , 8). This gives rise to nonintegral multiples of the Rabi cycle that lead to, as mentioned above, dierent statistics. Thus, for fair comparison we adjusted the value of the time increment as t = 2/(N e ) with N = 1000, so as to keep the number of Rabi cycles to one and isolate the eect of the detuning. Here, too, the results of simulations are unique since the value of N is suciently 7

2 1 0 4 2 0
Number of absorptions

5 0 10 0 50 0 1000 500 0 1x104 5x103 0 1x105 5x104 0 3x105 2x105 1x105 0

200 400 600 800 1000
W aiting Time

FIG. 3. The waiting-time distributions for o-resonant excitations. Detuning values are given by = 2k , (k = 0, 1, . . . , 8) (from bottom to top).

large. Simulations with N = 100 noticeably deviate from those with N = 1000 or higher. In section III B 2 below we will analyze how these distributions come about. 8

|1>

Quantum State
|0> (n-3) (n-2) (n-1) n Time in t

FIG. 4. A representative trajectory that gives rise to the waiting time 2t. Here the measurement time is in units of t and n varies from 3 to N . 2. Analysis of WTD

The analysis to account for the statistics can be done by scrutinizing each quantum trajectory. For example, let us consider the waiting time 2t. Of course, this is the smallest waiting time for two consecutive absorptions. A representative trajectory that contributes to this waiting time is shown in Fig. 4. In the gure n varies from 3 to N . If |j ; tn , (j = 0, 1) denotes the state of the atom at t = tn , the quantum trajectory can be written as |0; tn3 |1; tn2 |0; tn1 |1; tn , (7)

where denotes that the atom may be at an arbitrary state, and from Eq. (4) the probability for the atom to absorb a photon in the interval (tn1 , tn ] is

(2) n t = P0 (tn3 ) P1 (tn2 ) P0 (tn1 ) P1 (tn )t 4 2 e tn3 e tn2 = 4 1 2 sin2 sin2 e e 2 2 2 e tn1 e tn 1 2 sin2 sin2 t. e 2 2 9

(8)

The sum of probabilities over all trajectories ranging from n = 3 to n = N = 1000 gives the distribution for the waiting time 2t. For the case of on-resonance excitation
1000 n=3

(2) n = 23.4369, in agreement with the simulated value 234034 divided by the number
1000 n=3

of atoms, 104 . The summation of Eq. (8) is thus 2.34369 105 . For the o-resonance case = the sum is (2) n = 32.7145, which again agrees well with the simulated value 327564 divided by the number of atoms, 104 . When multiplied by t = 2/(N e ) = 106 / 2, it becomes 2.3133 105 . The analytical expression, Eq. (8) allows us to calculate how much error is introduced by setting N = 1000. In the limit N (and hence t 0) the sum of (2) n t can be replaced with an integral. The integration is straightforward and in the case of = 0 the integration over one Rabi cycle N t = 2 yields
2

cos4

t t 3 sin4 dt = , 2 2 64

(9)

which is 2.34375 105 for = 2 1000. The relative error due to the nite sum is about 2 103 %, and hence, the error due to limiting N to 1000 measurements is negligible. Other waiting times can be analyzed in the same manner. For example, for the waiting time 3t the pertinent sum over trajectories
1000 1000

(3) n =
n=4 n=4

P0 (tn4 ) P1 (tn3 ) P0 (tn1 ) P1 (tn )

(10)

gives 23.4338 for = 0 and 32.7135 for = . The simulated values are 234367 and 326328, respectively. And the sum for the waiting time 4t,

1000

1000

(4) n =
n=5 n=5

P0 (tn5 ) P1 (tn4 )[P1 (tn3 ) (11)

+P0 (tn3 ) P0 (tn2 )] P0 (tn1 ) P1 (tn ),

gives 18.5477 for = 0 and 25.3731 for = . Again, they agree with the simulated values 186202 and 253394, respectively. We did the analysis for several other waiting times and the results for = 0 are listed in Table I. They all agree with the simulated values, so the simulated photon distribution can be completely accounted for. We now turn to the problem of how nonintegral multiples of the Rabi cycle give rise to dierent WTDs. To this end let us consider how much contribution a trajectory makes 10

TABLE I. Comparison of WTDs between exact analytical calculations and simulations. Waiting time (in units of t) 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
3 64 3 64 19 512 7 256 323 16384 233 16384 1361 131072 253 32768 12295 2097152 9539 2097152 60443 16777216

Exact integral

Numerical value of column 2 with = 2 1000 2.34375 105 2.34375 105 1.85547 105 1.36719 105 9.85718 106 7.1106 106 5.1918 106 3.86047 106 2.93136 106 2.27427 106 1.80134 106

Simulation

2.34034 105 2.34367 105 1.86202 105 1.36756 105 9.8078 106 7.0979 106 5.1965 106 3.8758 106 2.9140 106 2.2332 106 1.7850 106

0.07

0.06

0.05

Probability

0.04

= 0.5
0.03

0.02

= 2

0.01

= 0
0.00 200 400 600 800 1000

FIG. 5. The probability density n versus n for the atom to follow the trajectory shown in Fig. 4 for some detuning values. Here n varies from 3 to 1000.

(2)

11

to the WTD. Again, we take up the case of the waiting time 2t. In Fig. 5 we plot the probability (2) n given in Eq. (8) versus n, (n = 3, . . . , 1000) for some detuning values. It shows that for = 0 the biggest contributions come from n values at about N/4 = 250 and 3N/4 = 750. However, as the detuning increases the n value that makes the largest contribution shifts toward N/2 = 500. In any case, the contributions to (2) n across dierent n values and hence dierent trajectories in a Rabi cycle are not equal. Likewise, dierent trajectories contribute dierently to other waiting times. In fractional multiples of the Rabi cycle a trajectory may be missing or included more than once and, threfore, can give rise to dierent WTDs. Finally, let us nd out where in the Rabi cycle the photon absorption(emission) rate is the highest. If one examines the one-atom quantum trajectory shown in Fig. 1, one can nd that the photon absorptions (and emissions) are concentrated in the region where P0 (t) P1 (t). The probability for a photon absorption(emission) to take place during the time interval (tn1 , tn ], regardless of what happens before t = tn1 and after t = tn , is given by

P0 (tn1 ) P1 (tn ) t e tn1 2 e tn 2 sin2 t, = 1 2 sin2 2 e 2 e 2 P1 (tn1 ) P0 (tn ) t 2 2 e tn1 e tn 1 2 sin2 t. = 2 sin2 e 2 e 2

(12)

Both probabilities become equal to each other (as should be) if t 0. Especially, for = 0 they approach
1 4

sin2 tn t. We show in Fig. 6 the simulated absorption rate and it

agrees with the analytical expression given by Eq. (12) divided by t. Note that for = 0, although the transition probability P1 (t) for the atom initially at the ground state to the upper state is the highest in the middle of the Rabi cycle t = /, it is where both absorption and emission rates are the lowest. The highest rates are located at about t = /(2) and t = 3/(2), where P0 (t) P1 (t) and this conrms the aforementioned qualitative remark based on the observation of one-atom trajectory. However, the position shifts to t = / as increases. 12

150 100 50 0 3000 2000 1000 0 3000 2000 1000 0 3000 2000 1000 0 3000 2000 1000 0
0 200 400 600
t

= 10

= 2

Absorption rate

= 0.5

= 0

800

1000

Time in multiples of

FIG. 6. The absorption rate (simulated) as a function of time. Time is given in units of t. The location of the maxima shifts as the detuning increases from bottom to top.

IV.

CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSIONS

In this paper we applied the quantum-jump approach to the JCM to gain further insights on the stimulated absorption and emission processes. This approach enabled us to obtain photon counting statistics for both on- and o-resonance excitations. It shows that for on13

or near-resonant excitations an atom absorbs or emits a photon mostly in less than 10 measurements. As the detuning increases, however, the waiting time to observe an absorption or emission spreads out. Thus, the observed WTDs for both absorbed and emitted photons tend to bunch less as the detuning increases. The statistics was accounted for by analytically examining quantum trajectories that contribute to each waiting time. The resulting statistics is a novel one, not following the well-known distributions such as the Poisson distribution. It was also shown how the photon absorption or emission rate varies with the position in a Rabi cycle and how the rate variation depends on the detuning. We found that the maximum absorption(emission) rate is located not where the absorption(emission) probability is the highest, but where the absorption and the emission probabilities are the same, instead. Time-resolved measurements of absorption and emission of photons experimentally would be prohibitive, while they are readily simulated numerically. Fortunately, the photon counting statistics is not sensitive to measurement frequency as long as it is large enough, say 1000 measurements per Rabi cycle. This is because the absorption(emission) probability is a slowly varying function of time such as shown in Fig. 5, so the probability changes only slightly during t. Thus, one does not have to worry about how many photon absorptions and emissions take place in the time interval between measurements to get the photon statistics right. In other words, one does not have to measure each and every photon absorption(emission) to obtain the statistics. Another interesting fact is that, if t is adjusted subject to N t = constant, the WTD is uniquely given regardless of the magnitude of the Rabi frequency. Thus, measurement interval t for the initially vacuum eld can be 10 times longer than that of the eld with 100 photons. Consequently, extracting statistics from the vacuum Rabi oscillation may be experimentally more feasible than high-eld experiments as long as measurement time is concerned. We considered only the number state of the eld in this paper. For the Rabi oscillation phenomena the results with the number state closely resemble the semiclassical ones except for the vacuum eld. Thus, for the non-vacuum elds the quantization of the cavity eld is not required to obtain the WTDs. The granularity of the eld emerges, however, when one considers other initial photon states, expressed in terms of the number states: | =
m cm ( )|m

. The probability for the atom to be in the upper state is obtained by

m

the weighted sum

|cm ( )|2 P1 (t), where P1 (t) is given by Eq. (4). The initial photon dis14

tribution gives a corresponding distribution of Rabi frequencies and hence the distribution of Rabi cycles, (m)N t = 2qm . Here qm is a fractional multiple of the Rabi cycle for the number state |m . Consequently, such a distribution uniquely determines the WTD as it does the collapses and revivals of the Rabi oscillations [10]. A possible application of this result is the inverse problem of getting the initial photon distribution in the cavity from WTD measurements. A further investigation needs to be done to see if such an application is feasible. Another avenue to investigate is to apply the approach discussed here to multimode, multiphoton extensions of the JCM [14] as well as multilevel atoms.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work was supported by a 2010 Research Grant from Sun Moon University.

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15

(1980). (b) G. Rempe, H. Walther, and N. Klein, Phys Rev Lett. 58, 353 (1987). [11] For a review, see S. Haroche and J-M. Raimond, Exploring the Quantum, (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006). [12] T. H ayrynena et al., Eur. Phys. J. D56, 113 (2010). [13] This choice of the atomic labels stems from the isomorphism between a two-level atom and a spin-1/2 particle, a fermion. The atomic state labels then can be regarded as the occupation numbers of the fermion. For a detailed discussion see [14]. [14] C. J. Lee, Phys. Rev. A42, 1601 (1990). [15] See, for example, W. H. Louisell, Quantum Statistical Properties of Radiation, (Wiley, New York, 1973), Chap. 5. [16] The time a quantum jump takes may be innitesimally small. In this paper we do not worry about how short the jump time is. We can always change the value of N as needed. In practice we choose some large N value that gives results virtually identical to the ones when N . For a discussion on the time related to quantum jumps see L. S. Schulman in, Time in Quantum Mechanics, Edited by J. G. Muga, R. Sala Mayato, and I. L. Egusquiza, (Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2002) p. 99, and references therein.

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