Exact $k$-body representation of the Jaynes-Cummings interaction in the dressed basis: Insight into many-body phenomena with light

TL;DR

This paper develops a non-perturbative method to transform the Jaynes-Cummings Hamiltonian into a dressed basis, revealing complex many-body interactions and phases in light-matter systems, advancing quantum simulation capabilities.

Contribution

It introduces a general infinite-sum bosonic k-body term expansion of the JC Hamiltonian, enabling detailed analysis of many-body phenomena in light-matter systems.

Findings

Rapid convergence in dispersive regime

Identification of four quantum phases in two-site JCH

Breakdown of JCH-BH analogy at resonance

Abstract

Analog quantum simulation - the technique of using one experimentally well-controlled physical system to mimic the behavior of another - has quickly emerged as one of the most promising near term strategies for studying strongly correlated quantum many-body systems. In particular, systems of interacting photons, realizable in solid-state cavity and circuit QED frameworks, for example, hold tremendous promise for the study of nonequilibrium many-body phenomena due to the capability to locally create and destroy photons. These systems are typically modeled using a Jaynes-Cummings-Hubbard (JCH) Hamiltonian, named due to similarities with the Bose-Hubbard (BH) model. Here, we present a non-perturbative procedure for transforming the JC Hamiltonian into a dressed operator representation that, in its most general form, admits an infinite sum of bosonic $k$-body terms where $k$ is bound only by the number of excitations in the system. We closely examine this result in both the dispersive and resonant coupling regimes, finding rapid convergence in the former and contributions from $k\gg1$ in the latter. Through extension to a two-site JCH system, we demonstrate that this approach facilitates close inspection of the analogy between the JCH and BH models and its breakdown for resonant light-matter coupling. Finally, we use this framework to survey the many-body character of a two-site JCH for general system parameters, identifying four unique quantum phases and the parameter regimes in which they are realized, thus highlighting phenomena realizable with finite JCH-based quantum simulators beyond the BH model. More broadly, this work is intended to serve as a clear mathematical exposition of bosonic many-body interactions underlying JC-type systems, often postulated through analogy to Kerr-like nonlinear susceptibilities or by matching coefficients to obtain the appropriate eigenvalue spectrum.