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Identifying unbound strong bunching and the breakdown of the rotating wave approximation in the quantum Rabi model

Álvaro Nodar1,2,3, Ruben Esteban1,2,*, Unai Muniain2, Michael J. Steel3,†, Javier Aizpurua1,2,‡, and Mikołaj K. Schmidt3,§

  • 1Materials Physics Center, CSIC-UPV/EHU, 20018 Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain
  • 2Donostia International Physics Center DIPC, 20018 Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain
  • 3School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Macquarie University, New South Wales 2109, Australia

  • *ruben.esteban@ehu.eus
  • †michael.steel@mq.edu.au
  • ‡aizpurua@ehu.eus
  • §mikolaj.schmidt@mq.edu.au
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Phys. Rev. Research 5, 043213 – Published 7 December, 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.5.043213

Abstract

We use a recently derived gauge-invariant formulation of the problem of a two-level system coupled to an optical cavity to explore the transition between the weak and the ultrastrong coupling regimes of light-matter interaction. We explore this transition using the intensity correlations g(2)(τ) of the emitted light, and we find strong, unbounded bunching of the emission from systems governed by the Rabi Hamiltonian. Surprisingly, this effect is observed not only in the ultrastrong coupling regime, but also for weakly coupled systems, where the Jaynes-Cummings Hamiltonian would predict the opposite, antibunched emission. This suggests that the higher-order correlations are a particularly sensitive probe of the divergence between the Jaynes-Cummings and Rabi Hamiltonians, and they can serve as an indicator of the breakdown of the rotating wave approximation. Our findings indicate also that the boundary between the weakly, strongly, and ultra-strongly-coupled dynamics is much richer than currently accepted.

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Phys. Rev. Research 5, 043213– Published 7 December, 2023
  • Received 30 November 2022
  • Accepted 5 November 2023
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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