2013/07/31 by Thomas M. Barlow, Robert Bennett, Almut Beige · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/09500340.2014.992992
published as Journal of Modern Optics, 62:sup2, S11-S20 (2015) · 11 pages, 2 figures, simplified version
arxiv created 2014/10/19 · arxiv updated 2015/01/22
Quantum optical systems, like trapped ions, are routinely described by master equations. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a master equation for two-sided optical cavities with spontaneous photon emission. To do so, we use the same notion of photons as in linear optics scattering theory and consider a continuum of traveling-wave cavity photon modes. Our model predicts the same stationary state photon emission rates for the different sides of a laser-driven optical cavity as classical theories. Moreover, it predicts the same time evolution of the total cavity photon number as the standard standing-wave description in experiments with resonant and near-resonant laser driving. The proposed resonator Hamiltonian can be used, for example, to analyse coherent cavity-fiber networks [Kyoseva et al., New J. Phys. 14, 023023 (2012)].