Pulsed coherent drive in the Jaynes--Cummings model

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that in the Jaynes--Cummings model, the dynamics under coherent drive are identical regardless of whether the drive couples through the cavity or atom, differing only by a trivial offset that can be canceled through homodyne detection.

Contribution

The authors prove the equivalence of cavity and atom driving in the Jaynes--Cummings model and develop a formalism for arbitrary multimode coherent state driving.

Findings

Dynamics are identical for cavity and atom driving except for a trivial offset.

Offset coherent state can be canceled by homodyne detection.

Formalism applies to steady-state and arbitrary multimode coherent drives.

Abstract

The Jaynes--Cummings system is one of the most fundamental models of how light and matter interact. When driving the system with a coherent state (e.g. laser light), it is often assumed that whether the light couples through the cavity or atom plays an important role in determining the dynamics of the system and its emitted field. Here, we prove that the dynamics are identical in either case except for the offset of a trivial coherent state. In particular, our formalism allows for both steady-state and the treatment of any arbitrary multimode coherent state driving the system. Finally, the offset coherent state can be interferometrically canceled by appropriately homodyning the emitted light, which is especially important for nanocavity quantum electrodynamics where driving the atom is much more difficult than driving the cavity.