Dissipation of the Rabi model beyond the rotating wave approximation: Quasi-degenerate qubit and ultra-strong coupling

TL;DR

This paper analytically studies the environmental effects on a quasi-degenerate qubit in the ultra-strong coupling regime, deriving a dressed state master equation beyond the rotating wave approximation to better understand the system's dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a microscopic derivation of a dressed state master equation for a quasi-degenerate qubit in the ultra-strong coupling regime, surpassing the limitations of the rotating wave approximation.

Findings

Derived a new master equation accounting for strong coupling effects.

Proposed a spectroscopic method to probe dressed energy levels.

Analyzed the impact of environmental influences on system dynamics.

Abstract

Environmental influences on the dynamics of a coupled qubit-oscillator system are studied analytically. We investigate the case of a quasi-degenerate qubit within the ultra-strong coupling regime for which the qubit frequency is much smaller than the frequency of the oscillator, and the coupling between the qubit and the oscillator is large, both of which invalidate the usually employed rotating wave approximation. In contrast to the standard quantum optics master equation, we explicitly take the qubit-oscillator coupling into account while microscopically deriving a dressed state master equation. Using the derived master equation, we discuss a spectroscopic technique which can be used to probe the dressed energy level structure of the qubit-oscillator system.