2019/01/31 by Hsing-Ta Chen, Tao E. Li, Abraham Nitzan +1
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Field (mathematics) #Physics #Quantum #Quantum Information and Cryptography #Quantum electrodynamics #Quantum mechanics #Quantum optics #Rotating wave approximation #Semiclassical physics #Spectroscopy and Quantum Chemical Studies #Spontaneous emission #Strong Light-Matter Interactions #Superradiance #physics.chem-ph #physics.optics
paper · pdf · doi:10.1021/acs.jpclett.9b00181
published as J. Phys. Chem. Lett., 2019, 10, 1331-1336 · 3 figures
openalex publication_date 2019/03/07 · arxiv created 2019/04/04 · arxiv updated 2019/04/08 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We reinvestigate the famous Mollow triplet and show that most of the well-known quantum characteristics of the Mollow triplet-including incoherent emission and a nonstandard dependence of the sidebands on detuning-can be recovered quantitatively using semiclassical dynamics with a classical light field. In fact, by not relying on the rotating wave approximation, a semiclassical model predicts some quantum effects beyond the quantum optical Bloch equation, including higher-order scattering and asymmetric sideband features. This Letter highlights the fact that, with strong intensities, many putatively quantum features of light-matter interactions arise from a simple balance of mean-field electrodynamics and elementary spontaneous emission, which requires minimal computational cost. Our results suggest that the application of semiclassical electrodynamics to problems with strong light-matter coupling in the fields of nanophotonics and superradiance are likely to yield a plethora of new information.