Effective models for quantum optics with multilayer open cavities

TL;DR

This paper develops a first-principles approach to model open cavities with multilayer mirrors, capturing the effects of mirror structure on cavity-reservoir interactions and photon dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method to derive cavity-reservoir coupling functions considering multilayer mirror structures, improving the accuracy of cavity models.

Findings

Multilayer mirror structure affects cavity-reservoir coupling.

Effective reflectivity can be defined for multilayer cavities.

Model accurately characterizes photon dynamics outside the cavity.

Abstract

Effective models to describe the dynamics of an open cavity have been extensively discussed in the literature. In many of these models the cavity leakage to the outside is treated as a loss introduced phenomenologically. In contrast to these, we focus here on characterizing the outgoing photon using a novel approach where the outside is treated as part of the system. In such a global system, in order to separately characterize the photon inside and outside cavity, we demonstrate a first-principle derivation of a coherent cavity-reservoir coupling function for cavities with mirrors consisting of a stack of dielectric layers. In particular, we show that due to the effects induced by the multilayer nature of the cavity mirror, even in the standardly defined high-finesse cavity regime, the cavity-reservoir system description might differ from the one where the structure of the mirror is neglected. Based on this, we define a generalized cavity response function and a cavity-reservoir coupling function, which account for the longitudinal geometric structure of the cavity mirror. This allows us to define an effective reflectivity for the cavity with a multilayer mirror as if it was sitting in a well-defined effective mirror plane. We estimate the error of such a definition by considering cavities of different lengths and mirror structures. Finally, we apply this model to characterize the dynamics of a single photon produced in such a cavity and propagating outside.