Quantum Rabi oscillations of a qubit strongly coupled to a one-dimensional waveguide

Abstract

We theoretically investigate quantum Rabi oscillations in a system consisting of a two-level atom (qubit) strongly coupled to a one-dimensional open waveguide. In contrast to conventional cavity quantum electrodynamics, the qubit interacts with a continuum of propagating modes, which gives rise to fundamentally different dynamical behavior. Within the rotating-wave approximation, we express the multimode Jaynes-Cummings Hamiltonian in terms of collective bosonic operators and show that the system possesses two integrals of motion, enabling an exact diagonalization of the Hamiltonian in the single-excitation subspace. Considering the initially excited qubit and field states described by multiphoton Fock-like states, we demonstrate that the Rabi oscillations represent a collective phenomenon corresponding to oscillations between multiphoton states differing by a single photon. We then extend our analysis to multiphoton processes in which the initial field is a multimode coherent state in a continuous spectrum. In this case, the Rabi frequency is shown to be sensitive to the spectral profile of the function that generates the coherent state.