Quantum Zeno Effect in Cavity QED: Experimental Proposal with Non Ideal Cavities and Detectors

TL;DR

This paper proposes an experimental setup to observe the Quantum Zeno Effect in cavity QED systems, accounting for realistic imperfections like dissipation and detection inefficiencies, and provides analytical predictions for experimental feasibility.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed experimental proposal with realistic modeling of dissipation and detection limitations for observing the Quantum Zeno Effect in cavity QED.

Findings

Quantum Zeno Effect can be observed with current technology under low dissipation.

Analytical expression for photon tunneling probability including dissipation and detection efficiency.

Feasibility demonstrated for realistic cavity QED experimental conditions.

Abstract

We propose an experiment with two coupled microwave cavities and a "tunneling" photon observed by the passage of Rydberg atoms. We model the coupled cavities as in Ref. \cite{art1} and include dissipative effects as well as limited detection efficiency. We also consider realistic finite atom-field interaction times and provide for a simple analytical expression for the photon "tunneling" probability including all these effects. We show that for sufficiently small dissipation constants the effect can be observed with current experimental facilities.