Photon creation in a resonant cavity with a nonstationary plasma mirror and its detection with Rydberg atoms

We investigate the dynamical Casimir effect and its detection with Rydberg atoms. The photons are created in a resonant cavity with a plasma mirror of a semiconductor slab which is irradiated by periodic laser pulses. The canonical Hamiltonian is derived for the creation and annihilation operators, showing the explicit time variation in the couplings, which originates from the external configuration such as a nonstationary plasma mirror. The number of created photons is evaluated as squeezing from the Heisenberg equations with the Hamiltonian. Then the detection of the photons as the atomic excitations is examined through the atom-field interaction. Some consideration is made for a feasible experimental realization with a semiconductor plasma mirror.

Figure 1

Photon creation $n_{\gamma }(t)$ (linear plot) in the early stage of DCE for $N_{\mathrm{pulse}}=t(\Omega /2\pi )⩾30$ (the number of periodic laser pulses). The results of the canonical and instantaneous-mode approaches are shown with the solid and dotted curves, respectively. The parameters are taken typically as $\langle \delta \omega \rangle =0.02{\omega }_0$, $2\langle g{\rangle }_{\Omega }=i0.01{\omega }_0$, and $\Delta =0$ (on-resonance, upper curves) and $-\langle \delta \omega \rangle$ (off-resonance, lower curves) for $\Omega$.

Figure 2

Photon creation $n_{\gamma }(t)$ (log plot) through the DCE period for $N_{\mathrm{pulse}}=t(\Omega /2\pi )⩾300$. The results of the canonical and instantaneous-mode approaches are shown with the solid and dotted curves, respectively. The parameters are taken typically as $\langle \delta \omega \rangle =0.02{\omega }_0$, $2\langle g{\rangle }_{\Omega }=i0.01{\omega }_0$, and $\Omega =2.04{\omega }_0$ ($\Delta =0$).