The 1996 experiment by Brune et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 76, 1800 (1996)] on vacuum Rabi oscillation is analyzed by means of alternative models of atom-reservoir interaction. Agreement with experimental Rabi oscillation data can be obtained if one defines jump operators in the dressed-state basis and takes into account thermal fluctuations between dressed states belonging to the same manifold. Such low-frequency transitions could be ignored in a closed cavity, but the cavity employed in the experiment was open, which justifies our assumption. The cavity quality factor corresponding to the data is approximately Q=3.31×1010, whereas Q reported in the experiment was Q=7×107. The rate of decoherence arising from opening of the cavity can be of the same order as an analogous correction coming from finite time resolution Δt (formally equivalent to collisional decoherence). Peres-Horodecki separability criterion shows that the rate at which the atom-field state approaches a separable state is controlled by fluctuations between dressed states from the same manifold and not by the rate of transitions toward the ground state. In consequence, improving the Q factor we do not improve the coherence properties of the cavity.
Authors
Additional information
- Category
- Publikacja w czasopiśmie
- Type
- artykuł w czasopiśmie wyróżnionym w JCR
- Language
- angielski
- Publication year
- 2009
