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In the fields of atomic, molecular, and optical science, the term light dressed state refers to a quantum state of an atomic or molecular system interacting with a laser light in terms of the Floquet picture, i.e. roughly like an atom or a molecule plus a photon. The Floquet picture is based on the Floquet theorem in differential equations with periodic coefficients.
The Hamiltonian of a system of charged particles interacting with a laser light can be expressed as
| (1) |
where is the vector potential of the electromagnetic field of the laser; is periodic in time as . The position and momentum of the -th particle are denoted as and , respectively, while its mass and charge are symbolized as and , respectively. is the speed of light. By virtue of this time-periodicity of the laser field, the total Hamiltonian is also periodic in time as
The Floquet theorem guarantees that any solution of the Schrödinger equation with this type of Hamiltonian,
can be expressed in the form
where has the same time-periodicity as the Hamiltonian, Therefore, this part can be expanded in a Fourier series, obtaining
| (2) |
where is the frequency of the laser field. This expression (2) reveals that a quantum state of the system governed by the Hamiltonian (1) can be specified by a real number and an integer .
The integer in eq. (2) can be regarded as the number of photons absorbed from (or emitted to) the laser field. In order to prove this statement, we clarify the correspondence between the solution (2), which is derived from the classical expression of the electromagnetic field where there is no concept of photons, and one which is derived from a quantized electromagnetic field (see quantum field theory). (It can be verified that is equal to the expectation value of the absorbed photon number at the limit of , where is the initial number of total photons.)
In quantum mechanics, the Hamiltonian of a system is an operator corresponding to the total energy of that system, including both kinetic energy and potential energy. Its spectrum, the system's energy spectrum or its set of energy eigenvalues, is the set of possible outcomes obtainable from a measurement of the system's total energy. Due to its close relation to the energy spectrum and time-evolution of a system, it is of fundamental importance in most formulations of quantum theory.
In particle physics, the Dirac equation is a relativistic wave equation derived by British physicist Paul Dirac in 1928. In its free form, or including electromagnetic interactions, it describes all spin-1/2 massive particles, called "Dirac particles", such as electrons and quarks for which parity is a symmetry. It is consistent with both the principles of quantum mechanics and the theory of special relativity, and was the first theory to account fully for special relativity in the context of quantum mechanics. It was validated by accounting for the fine structure of the hydrogen spectrum in a completely rigorous way. It has become vital in the building of the Standard Model.
The Schrödinger equation is a partial differential equation that governs the wave function of a non-relativistic quantum-mechanical system. Its discovery was a significant landmark in the development of quantum mechanics. It is named after Erwin Schrödinger, who postulated the equation in 1925 and published it in 1926, forming the basis for the work that resulted in his Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933.
In quantum physics, a wave function is a mathematical description of the quantum state of an isolated quantum system. The most common symbols for a wave function are the Greek letters ψ and Ψ. Wave functions are complex-valued. For example, a wave function might assign a complex number to each point in a region of space. The Born rule provides the means to turn these complex probability amplitudes into actual probabilities. In one common form, it says that the squared modulus of a wave function that depends upon position is the probability density of measuring a particle as being at a given place. The integral of a wavefunction's squared modulus over all the system's degrees of freedom must be equal to 1, a condition called normalization. Since the wave function is complex-valued, only its relative phase and relative magnitude can be measured; its value does not, in isolation, tell anything about the magnitudes or directions of measurable observables. One has to apply quantum operators, whose eigenvalues correspond to sets of possible results of measurements, to the wave function ψ and calculate the statistical distributions for measurable quantities.
The Klein–Gordon equation is a relativistic wave equation, related to the Schrödinger equation. It is second-order in space and time and manifestly Lorentz-covariant. It is a differential equation version of the relativistic energy–momentum relation .
In condensed matter physics, Bloch's theorem states that solutions to the Schrödinger equation in a periodic potential can be expressed as plane waves modulated by periodic functions. The theorem is named after the Swiss physicist Felix Bloch, who discovered the theorem in 1929. Mathematically, they are written
In physics, the Rabi cycle is the cyclic behaviour of a two-level quantum system in the presence of an oscillatory driving field. A great variety of physical processes belonging to the areas of quantum computing, condensed matter, atomic and molecular physics, and nuclear and particle physics can be conveniently studied in terms of two-level quantum mechanical systems, and exhibit Rabi flopping when coupled to an optical driving field. The effect is important in quantum optics, magnetic resonance and quantum computing, and is named after Isidor Isaac Rabi.
The adiabatic theorem is a concept in quantum mechanics. Its original form, due to Max Born and Vladimir Fock (1928), was stated as follows:
In physics, canonical quantization is a procedure for quantizing a classical theory, while attempting to preserve the formal structure, such as symmetries, of the classical theory to the greatest extent possible.
In quantum mechanics, a rotational transition is an abrupt change in angular momentum. Like all other properties of a quantum particle, angular momentum is quantized, meaning it can only equal certain discrete values, which correspond to different rotational energy states. When a particle loses angular momentum, it is said to have transitioned to a lower rotational energy state. Likewise, when a particle gains angular momentum, a positive rotational transition is said to have occurred.
In atomic physics, the electron magnetic moment, or more specifically the electron magnetic dipole moment, is the magnetic moment of an electron resulting from its intrinsic properties of spin and electric charge. The value of the electron magnetic moment is −9.2847646917(29)×10−24 J⋅T−1. In units of the Bohr magneton (μB), it is −1.00115965218059(13) μB, a value that was measured with a relative accuracy of 1.3×10−13.
In condensed matter physics, Hofstadter's butterfly is a graph of the spectral properties of non-interacting two-dimensional electrons in a perpendicular magnetic field in a lattice. The fractal, self-similar nature of the spectrum was discovered in the 1976 Ph.D. work of Douglas Hofstadter and is one of the early examples of modern scientific data visualization. The name reflects the fact that, as Hofstadter wrote, "the large gaps [in the graph] form a very striking pattern somewhat resembling a butterfly."
In quantum mechanics, the angular momentum operator is one of several related operators analogous to classical angular momentum. The angular momentum operator plays a central role in the theory of atomic and molecular physics and other quantum problems involving rotational symmetry. Being an observable, its eigenfunctions represent the distinguishable physical states of a system's angular momentum, and the corresponding eigenvalues the observable experimental values. When applied to a mathematical representation of the state of a system, yields the same state multiplied by its angular momentum value if the state is an eigenstate. In both classical and quantum mechanical systems, angular momentum is one of the three fundamental properties of motion.
The Franz–Keldysh effect is a change in optical absorption by a semiconductor when an electric field is applied. The effect is named after the German physicist Walter Franz and Russian physicist Leonid Keldysh.
In quantum optics, the Jaynes–Cummings model is a theoretical model that describes the system of a two-level atom interacting with a quantized mode of an optical cavity, with or without the presence of light. It was originally developed to study the interaction of atoms with the quantized electromagnetic field in order to investigate the phenomena of spontaneous emission and absorption of photons in a cavity. It is named after Edwin Thompson Jaynes and Fred Cummings in the 1960s and was confirmed experimentally in 1987.
In spectroscopy, the Autler–Townes effect, is a dynamical Stark effect corresponding to the case when an oscillating electric field is tuned in resonance to the transition frequency of a given spectral line, and resulting in a change of the shape of the absorption/emission spectra of that spectral line. The AC Stark effect was discovered in 1955 by American physicists Stanley Autler and Charles Townes.
In quantum mechanics, the Pauli equation or Schrödinger–Pauli equation is the formulation of the Schrödinger equation for spin-1/2 particles, which takes into account the interaction of the particle's spin with an external electromagnetic field. It is the non-relativistic limit of the Dirac equation and can be used where particles are moving at speeds much less than the speed of light, so that relativistic effects can be neglected. It was formulated by Wolfgang Pauli in 1927. In its linearized form it is known as Lévy-Leblond equation.
In 1927, a year after the publication of the Schrödinger equation, Hartree formulated what are now known as the Hartree equations for atoms, using the concept of self-consistency that Lindsay had introduced in his study of many electron systems in the context of Bohr theory. Hartree assumed that the nucleus together with the electrons formed a spherically symmetric field. The charge distribution of each electron was the solution of the Schrödinger equation for an electron in a potential , derived from the field. Self-consistency required that the final field, computed from the solutions, was self-consistent with the initial field, and he thus called his method the self-consistent field method.
In physics, relativistic quantum mechanics (RQM) is any Poincaré covariant formulation of quantum mechanics (QM). This theory is applicable to massive particles propagating at all velocities up to those comparable to the speed of light c, and can accommodate massless particles. The theory has application in high energy physics, particle physics and accelerator physics, as well as atomic physics, chemistry and condensed matter physics. Non-relativistic quantum mechanics refers to the mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics applied in the context of Galilean relativity, more specifically quantizing the equations of classical mechanics by replacing dynamical variables by operators. Relativistic quantum mechanics (RQM) is quantum mechanics applied with special relativity. Although the earlier formulations, like the Schrödinger picture and Heisenberg picture were originally formulated in a non-relativistic background, a few of them also work with special relativity.
Lagrangian field theory is a formalism in classical field theory. It is the field-theoretic analogue of Lagrangian mechanics. Lagrangian mechanics is used to analyze the motion of a system of discrete particles each with a finite number of degrees of freedom. Lagrangian field theory applies to continua and fields, which have an infinite number of degrees of freedom.
