Collapse and Revivals of the Photon Field in a Landau-Zener Process

Abstract

We consider the evolution of a two-level system coupled to a photon field initially in a coherent state, as the energy of the two-level system is linearly varied through resonance with the photon field. At a fixed time after the resonance, the amplitude of the photon field is found to show a collapse and subsequent revivals as a function of rate of energy variation. Including decay of the photon field, we find that the observation of such collapse and revivals is near the technological limit of current cavity QED experiments but should be achievable.