| Literature DB >> 28205542 |
Salvatore Lorenzo1,2, Federico Lombardo3, Francesco Ciccarello3,4, G Massimo Palma3,4.
Abstract
As discovered by P. W. Anderson, excitations do not propagate freely in a disordered lattice, but, due to destructive interference, they localise. As a consequence, when an atom interacts with a disordered lattice, one indeed observes a non-trivial excitation exchange between atom and lattice. Such non-trivial atomic dynamics will in general be characterised also by a non-trivial quantum information backflow, a clear signature of non-Markovian dynamics. To investigate the above scenario, we consider a quantum emitter, or atom, weakly coupled to a uniform coupled-cavity array (CCA). If initially excited, in the absence of disorder, the emitter undergoes a Markovian spontaneous emission by releasing all its excitation into the CCA (initially in its vacuum state). By introducing static disorder in the CCA the field normal modes become Anderson-localized, giving rise to a non-Markovian atomic dynamics. We show the existence of a functional relationship between a rigorous measure of quantum non-Markovianity and the CCA localization. We furthermore show that the average non-Markovianity of the atomic dynamics is well-described by a phenomenological model in which the atom is coupled, at the same time, to a single mode and to a standard - Markovian - dissipative bath.Entities:
Year: 2017 PMID: 28205542 PMCID: PMC5311917 DOI: 10.1038/srep42729
Source DB: PubMed Journal: Sci Rep ISSN: 2045-2322 Impact factor: 4.379
Figure 1(a) Sketch of the considered model: a two-level atom S is coupled to the central cavity of an infinite-length CCA. (b) Phenomenological model: S is strongly coupled to a specific localized field mode and perturbatively to all the remaining ones. The latter field modes thus embody an effective Markovian bath.
Figure 2Ensemble-averaged non-Markovianity measure versus width σ for a gaussian PDF resulting from numerical simulations of the full model (grey points) and the phenomenological model (curves).
We set N = 1000. For each value of σ, averages were performed over 4 × 103 different realizations of disorder. The numerical points (in grey) are shown with the associated error bars (calculated as the mean absolute deviations). The curves correspond to the outcomes of the phenomenological model with the atom-localized-mode coupling strength calculated as (red-dotted) and (green-dotdashed). Inset: behavior of for low values of σ.
Figure 3Ensemble-averaged non-Markovianity measure versus width σ for a Cauchy PDF resulting from numerical simulations of the full model (grey points) and the phenomenological model (curves).
We set N = 1000. For each value of σ, averages were performed over 4 × 103 different realizations of disorder. The numerical points (in grey) are shown with the associated error bars (calculated as the mean absolute deviations). The curves correspond to the outcomes of the phenomenological model with the atom-localized-mode coupling strength calculated as (red-dotted) and (green-dotdashed). Inset: for low values of σ.
Figure 4Non-Markovianity measure of the phenomenological effective model as a function of according to Eqs (22) and (23).