Spontaneous decay of artificial atoms in a three-qubit system

TL;DR

This paper investigates the decay dynamics of a three-qubit chain in a waveguide, revealing how qubit spacing and frequency detuning influence decay rates, stationary states, and photon emission spectra.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of how qubit spacing and frequency detuning affect decay behavior and photon emission in a three-qubit waveguide system.

Findings

Decay depends on the value of kd, with stationary states at integer multiples of π.

Dark states prevent decay even without photon emission.

Frequency detuning allows control over decay rates.

Abstract

We study the evolution of qubits amplitudes in a one-dimensional chain consisting of three equidistantly spaced noninteracting qubits embedded in an open waveguide. The study is performed in the frame of single-excitation subspace, where the only qubit in the chain is initially excited. We show that the dynamics of qubits amplitudes crucially depend on the value of $kd$, where $k$ is the wave vector, $d$ is a distance between neighbor qubits. If $kd$ is equal to an integer multiple of $\pi$, then the qubits are excited to a stationary level. In this case, it is the dark states which prevent qubits from decaying to zero even though they do not contribute to the output spectrum of photon emission. For other values of $kd$ the excitations of qubits exhibit the damping oscillations which represent the vacuum Rabi oscillations in a three-qubit system. In this case, the output spectrum of photon radiation is determined by a subradiant state which has the lowest decay rate. We also investigated the case with the frequency of a central qubit being different from that of the edge qubits. In this case, the qibits decay rates can be controlled by the frequency detuning between the central and the edge qubits.