Integrability, multifractality, and two-photon dynamics in disordered Tavis-Cummings models

Abstract

The Tavis-Cummings model is a paradigmatic central-mode model in which a set of two-level quantum emitters (spins) are coupled to a collective cavity mode. Here we study the eigenstate spectrum, its localization properties, and the effect on dynamics, focusing on the two-excitation sector relevant for nonlinear photonics. These models admit two sources of disorder: in the coupling between the spins and the cavity, and in the energy shifts of the individual spins. While this model was known to be exactly solvable in the limit of a homogeneous coupling and inhomogeneous energy shifts, we establish here the solvability in the opposite limit of a homogeneous energy shift and inhomogeneous coupling, presenting the exact solution and corresponding conserved quantities. We identify three different classes of eigenstates, exhibiting different degrees of multifractality and semilocalization closely tied to the integrable points, and we study their stability to perturbations away from these solvable points. The dynamics of the cavity occupation number away from equilibrium, exhibiting boson bunching and a two-photon blockade, is explicitly related to the localization properties of the eigenstates, and it illustrates how these models support a collective spin description despite the presence of disorder. Published by the American Physical Society 2024