Thermal relaxation of a QED cavity

Laurent Bruneau (1) , Claude-Alain Pillet (2, 3, 4, 5)

1 AGM - UMR 8088 - Analyse, Géométrie et Modélisation
2 FRUMAM - Fédération de Recherche des Unités de MAthématiques de Marseille
3 CPT - E5 Physique statistique et systèmes complexes
4 CPT - Centre de Physique Théorique - UMR 6207
5 CPT - Centre de Physique Théorique - UMR 7332

We study repeated interactions of the quantized electromagnetic field in a cavity with single two-levels atoms. Using the Markovian nature of the resulting quantum evolution we study its large time asymptotics. We show that, whenever the atoms are distributed according to the canonical ensemble at temperature T>0 and some generic non-degeneracy condition is satisfied, the cavity field relaxes towards some invariant state. Under some more stringent non-resonance condition, this invariant state is thermal equilibrium at some renormalized temperature T*. Our result is non-perturbative in the strength of the atom-field coupling. The relaxation process is slow (non-exponential) due to the presence of infinitely many metastable states of the cavity field.

Keywords: Rabi oscillations; repeated interactions; cavity QED; Thermal relaxation; completely positive maps; one-atom maser

Domains: Mathematical Physics [math-ph]; Mathematical Physics [math-ph]; Quantum Physics [quant-ph]

Laurent Bruneau, Claude-Alain Pillet. Thermal relaxation of a QED cavity. Journal of Statistical Physics, 2009, 134 (5-6), pp.1071-1095. ⟨10.1007/s10955-008-9656-2⟩. ⟨hal-00325206⟩