Two-level atom witness of thermalization of multimode optical fibers

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the thermalization of multimode optical fibers can be inferred through the dynamics of a coupled two-level atom, revealing that the atom's temperature reflects the optical modes' thermal state.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the thermalization of optical modes can be detected via the temperature increase of a coupled two-level atom, providing a new method to study optical fiber thermalization.

Findings

Two-level atom's dynamics indicate optical mode thermalization.

Atom temperature correlates with optical mode temperature and photon number.

In high-temperature limit, atom populations become equal.

Abstract

In the present project, we study the dynamics of the two-level system coupled with the multimode optical system. In particular, we considered a square lattice of optical fibers. We aimed to answer whether we can infer information about the thermalization of optical modes through the thermalization of two-level atoms. After averaging over the set of modes, the dynamic of the two-level system is free of quantum revivals, and that is the signature of thermalization. We showed that the temperature of the two-level system increases with the temperature of optical modes and mean photon number. In the high-temperature limit of optical modes, the temperature of the level system tends to be infinity, and level populations are equal.