Effects of anharmonicity on nonclassical states of the time-dependent harmonic oscillator.

Abstract

Harmonic oscillators with time-dependent frequencies describe physics of the Paul trap of ions, radiation fields in media of time-varying dielectric constants, and so on. Their ground states are generically squeezed states. Here the effects of small anharmonicity on such nonclassical states are discussed. A perturbative calculation is performed, in which the unperturbed states are prepared in terms of the Hermitian invariant of the time-dependent harmonic oscillator. A quartic potential perturbation is investigated in detail. It is found that the correction term as well as the unperturbed term in the ground-state persistence probability can be expressed by the moments of a number operator alone. The oscillatory behavior is found in that correction term, which shows a competition of excitation and deexcitation due to the time dependence of the frequency and the nonlinear interaction. This may be observed experimentally as the temporal fluctuation of the quasienergy levels. Some formulas are also presented for the variances and correlations of the quadratures in the perturbed states.