Exact solution of a non-stationary cavity with one intermode interaction

Abstract

A non-stationary one-dimensional cavity can be described by the time-dependent and multi-mode effective Hamiltonian of the so-called dynamical Casimir effect. Due to the non-adiabatic boundary conditions imposed in one of the cavity mirrors, this effect predicts the generation of real photons out of vacuum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field. Such photon generation strongly depends on the number of modes in the cavity and their intermode couplings. Here, by using an algebraic approach, we show that for any set of functions parameterizing the effective Hamiltonian, the corresponding time-dependent Schrödinger equation admits an exact solution when the cavity has one intermode interaction. With the exact time evolution operator, written as a product of eleven exponentials, we obtain the average photon number in each mode, a few relevant observables, and some statistical properties for the evolved vacuum state.