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Free keywords:
Quantum Physics, quant-ph
MPINP:
Research group J. Evers – Division C. H. Keitel
Abstract:
We develop two ab initio quantum approaches to thin-film x-ray cavity quantum
electrodynamics with spectrally narrow x-ray resonances, such as those provided
by M\"ossbauer nuclei. The first method is based on a few-mode description of
the cavity, and promotes and extends existing phenomenological few-mode models
to an ab initio theory. The second approach uses analytically-known Green's
functions to model the system. The two approaches not only enable one to ab
initio derive the effective few-level scheme representing the cavity and the
nuclei in the low-excitation regime, but also provide a direct avenue for
studies at higher excitation, involving non-linear or quantum phenomena. The ab
initio character of our approaches further enables direct optimizations of the
cavity structure and thus of the photonic environment of the nuclei, to tailor
the effective quantum optical level scheme towards particular applications. To
illustrate the power of the ab initio approaches, we extend the established
quantum optical modeling to resonant cavity layers of arbitrary thickness,
which is essential to achieve quantitative agreement for cavities used in
recent experiments. Further, we consider multi-layer cavities featuring
electromagnetically induced transparency, derive their quantum optical
few-level systems ab initio, and identify the origin of discrepancies in the
modeling found previously using phenomenological approaches as arising from
cavity field gradients across the resonant layers.
