Incoherently driven Dicke model

Abstract

The exact steady-state solution for the reduced atomic density operator for a model system of N identical two-level atoms confined to a single site (the Dicke model) and driven by a totally incoherent broad-band (chaotic) field is derived through the equivalent Fokker-Planck equation of the system. Steady-state values of the atomic observables, higher moments and atomic fluctuations are calculated for an arbitrary N and an arbitrary field strength. It is shown that when the chaotic field is a thermal (black-body) field the atomic system is driven into a steady relative occupation number that obeys the Boltzmann distribution law only for N=1. (The same result for N>1 atoms can be reached only if the cooperative interactions between the atoms are ignored.) In the thermodynamic limit N to infinity there is no critical behaviour in contrast to the resonant coherently driven case. It is also shown that semiclassical (direct) factorisation of the equations of motion does not lead to the correct results for the N to infinity limit of the exact quantum case. Within the exact theory numerical results for finite N (<or=100) are presented for the time-dependent expectation values of the atomic operators, the intensity and the intensity autocorrelation function. Superradiant pulses are emitted by N initially inverted atoms but as the incident intensity is increased this superradiant behaviour is obscured. The steady-state fluorescence spectrum is a single Lorentzian of width proportional to N in the weak-field case. In the strong-field case the spectrum is insensitive to the number of atoms and the result is similar to the one-atom situation. Photon bunching and antibunching effects are investigated for the weak- and strong-field limits. When the chaotic driving field is simply a single-mode thermal field the approach to atomic saturation is delayed in comparison with the case of the broad-band chaotic field.