Metastability in the driven-dissipative Rabi model

TL;DR

This paper investigates the long-time dynamics of the driven-dissipative Rabi model, revealing the emergence of long-lived metastable states when the atom-cavity coupling exceeds the cavity frequency, with implications for experimental observation.

Contribution

It introduces a Floquet-Liouville approach to systematically analyze metastable states in the driven-dissipative Rabi model, highlighting their properties and relation to the energy spectrum.

Findings

Long-lived metastable states emerge at strong coupling.

Metastable states differ significantly from steady states.

Properties of metastable states relate to the Rabi Hamiltonian spectrum.

Abstract

We explore the long-time dynamics of Rabi model in a driven-dissipative setting and show that, as the atom-cavity coupling strength becomes larger than the cavity frequency, a new time scale emerges. This time scale, much larger than the natural relaxation time of the atom and the cavity, leads to long-lived metastable states susceptible to being observed experimentally. By applying a Floquet-Liouville approach to the time-dependent master equation, we systematically investigate the set of possible metastable states. We find that the properties of the metastable states can differ drastically from those of the steady state and relate these properties to the energy spectrum of the Rabi Hamiltonian.